A Child's Guide to Gotham
by Sookie Starchild
Summary: Harley Quinn tells classic stories with her own special twist.
1. This is NOT the Wizard of Oz

Don't cry, sweetie. It's going to be just fine. Aw, come on! The very worst case scenario is you get to meet Batman! That's kinda fun, ain't it? Big spooky guy with pointy ears and a swishy cape! He's just like Dracula!

Uh… do you want some candy?

Not allowed to have candy? What are you, diabetic or something?

Alright. No candy. How about drawing, do you like to draw? No?

Well, uh, what kind of stories do you like?

Oh. Um…

I don't think any of my "adventures" are age appropriate.

How about a nice, girlie fairy tale? But nothing with a beautiful princess getting rescued by some chump. Nobody likes a chump who goes around saving everybody! Now let's see…

Once upon a time, there was a small town with lots of very boring people who all worked in family businesses. The bakery was a family business, the dry cleaners, the corner market, the pizza place, all that stuff. It's like nobody could ever think of who to give their job to when they retired, so they just handed it over to their dumb kids. Even the mobsters handed everything over to their dumb kids. It was disgusting.

In this town lived a girl named… uh… Quinnifer. Quinnifer Blondell, but everybody called her Quinn. And she was a really nice, pretty girl with braided blonde hair and a cute little dress. Only it definitely wasn't gingham, because that's tacky. And she never wore blue because it was the colour of a rival gang, so she wore a nice little red dress with a little black apron with all red hearts and diamonds for the trim, okay? Real cute.

Quinn was an orphan, but her Auntie Em and her Uncle Mort took care of her. They were alright people, but _very_ South Gotham. Auntie Em worked out of her home selling Avon, and Uncle Mort fixed cars. She also had a pet hyena called Haha, who was her best friend ever.

And even though Quinn had a big dream to go to university and become a psychologist with a doctorate and everything, Auntie Em would not shut _up_ about her getting a fallback diploma in cosmetology. Like cosmetology is somehow a more stable field than being a freaking psychologist.

"The human mind comes and goes, but ladies are always gonna want some lipstick!"

Anyway, one day a tornado came out of the ocean and scooped up Quinn's house while she was inside of it, putting a nice little red bow in Haha's fur. I guess Auntie Em and Uncle Mort were out at the time. Probably working. The tornado whipped the house around so bad, that Quinn got real dizzy and lost her balance and hit her head on the kitchen floor.

_Wham! _

It all went black!

When she woke up, Haha was licking her face. The house wasn't spinning no more, and Quinn looked up to see where she'd landed.

Outside was a place like nothing she'd ever seen. Big gothic buildings with pointy roofs, gargoyles freakin' everywhere, and a statue of renowned psychoanalyst Amadeus Arkham. It was really quiet, and it was the dead of night. Later, Quinn would learn that it was always night time in that magical land. The only thing was that sometimes there were stars and junk and sometimes the sky was just pitch black. But don't go picturing no sunny skies, cuz there ain't none in this story.

So while she was looking around, trying to figure out where exactly the tornado had dropped her, a group of people came her way. They were all wearing orange jumpsuits with numbers on them. Oh! But they were short. Munchkins, okay? Think of three boy munchkins and one girl munchkin all in little general population jumpsuits. And sensible shoes. Everybody in sensible shoes. Got it?

Behind the munchkins walked a magnificent man. His skin was all white like a porcelain doll, and he had hair the colour of summer grass, and a big happy smile. He was tall and handsome and wearing a very classy suit. Purple pinstripe, yellow shirt, nice vest, boutonnière - panache! And spats on his shoes! Now _that's_ style!

"Excellent work, my dear!" He said and clapped his hands, "I've been trying to figure out a way to kill Dr. Young for months now! But dropping a house on her? It's brilliant! She'd never see it coming, but then how could she miss it? Ha ha ha! I love it!"

When he laughed, it was wonderful. Like music.

Quinn turned around and saw some feet sticking out from under her house. Apparently, she'd crushed somebody to death. But it was manslaughter and probably an act of god, and a good lawyer could get her off. Maybe probation or something, but it's not like she could have stopped the house from falling or called out to the people below. Anyway, the now-dead Dr. Young was wearing a pair of really fabulous red pumps. They were, like, Gucci or something. The kind of thing you definitely couldn't afford on an asylum worker's salary, if you catch my drift.

"And I've just got one question for you," said the man in a cheerful voice, "Are you _fun_ crazy or _boring_ crazy?"

"I'm not crazy at all! And I didn't mean to kill that broad! She shoulda looked up if she didn't want to get smushed by a house! And where the hell am I?!"

"You, my dear, are in the merry old land of Arkham. And I bet you a nickel you'll be the fun kind of crazy before the night is up. The woman you crushed to death was a pain in the ass named Penelope Young, and you've done me one hell of a favour by offing her. A house! Straight out of the sky! _Splat! _I can't get over it!"

"Yeah, well, I need to get back home to my Aunt and Uncle. They're probably worried."

"Probably, but who cares? You should stay here! With me!"

Now, you gotta understand that at this point Quinn had just met this guy, and while he seemed very interesting and attractive, he was also obviously insane. And, also at this point, Quinn thought that it might be a bad thing to be socially involved with crazy people because she wanted to study them as a profession. That takes a certain amount of… detachment. So, just then, all she wanted was to go home.

"No thanks, Looney Tunes! I'm getting back to Kansas or wherever it is I'm from!"

Joker folded his arms like he was going to sic his munchkins on her or something, but then he just shook his head.

"Oh alright, but you should know that you've got potential, kid. If you want to get back home, you're going to have to go and find the Great and Powerful Ra's. The Demon's Rear End. He lives in the Green City. In order to get there, you need to follow the yellow brick road."

Quinn looked all around her.

"I don't see no yellow brick road." She said.

"Darn it! I knew we forgot to do _something_!" And Joker let out his merry laugh, "Well, I guess you could ask around. He's not hard to find. When it's quiet on the high plains, put your hand to your ear and listen for the sound of pompous rambling. Then go in that direction. Here, take these."

He walked over to Dr. Young's corpse and pulled the very expensive shoes off her.

"She bought 'em with _my_ money, and who knows if she's got a legal will. Besides, I like my friends to look good. Which reminds me!"

He pulled a playing card out of his back pocket and handed it to her with a flourish. It was a joker card, and a real nice one at that. Not the kind you get in one of those bicycle packs any old mook uses for poker night.

"If anybody gives you trouble, show them this. If they don't piss themselves with fear, tell 'em that the little J in the corner stands for Joker."

Well, Quinn didn't want to be rude and they were the nicest shoes she'd ever seen in her life, and they fit good, so she put them on. Then she put the joker card in the waistband of her apron, picked up Haha and started in the direction that seemed the most reasonable.

"Oh! Sorry!" Joker called out, "He's definitely not in _that_ direction!"

As Quinn passed by him on her way down the other road, she mumbled:

"You really ought to put in those stupid yellow bricks, or paint an arrow or something, you know that?"

Well, it seemed like she was on the right path. And while the little Arkham courtyard disappeared further and further behind her, the road in front of her was lined with autumn trees with big red and orange leaves. It might have been pretty, but Quinn didn't care because she was getting hungry. She was hungry and cranky and toting around this stupid, stinky hyena who was her best friend forever but felt like he weighed like a million pounds, but she didn't want to put him down because he'd probably just run away and ugh. UGH! It was such a day!

"I tell you, Haha, the sooner we find that stupid Great and Powerful Ra's the better. We'll just pin him down and kick him in the balls 'til he gives us a way home. And lunch, because I'm so hungry I could eat one of those street corner hamburgers made out of god-knows-what and bacteria. And that Joker? He might be the most amazing person I've ever met, but he's also a big crazy jerk. I swear to god, Haha, I think I'm in love with him."

The trees thinned out some and Quinn found herself at the edge of a big farm full of cornstalks. There was a nice high fence, and the corn was ripe, so Quinn grabbed an ear of it and hopped onto the fence to sit and eat. Technically, she'd stolen the corn, but there weren't any cops around or nothing, so who cares?

Across from her spot on the fence was a scarecrow up on a post. It had a well-shaped head for a scarecrow, not lumpy or over-stuffed, and skinny arms that hung limply out from its shoulders. Somebody had put a pointed brown hat on its head, and some weird sicko had put a hangman's noose around its neck. For a second, she could've sworn she saw its eyes move.

Of course, she didn't really have time to think about the scarecrow, because that's when the scorpions started crawling up the corn and coming to eat her skin. And then she felt like she was drowning in her own blood, and she kept seeing herself dying alone and forgotten and maybe going home and becoming a cosmetician and things like that. Then she barfed and barfed and barfed, and all of a sudden she was back in the cornfield, lying on the ground while Haha sniffed at the dead woman's shoes on her feet.

She managed to sit up a little and noticed that the scarecrow had been moved and was standing in front of her.

"What did you see?" The Scarecrow asked.

"Oh my god. Oh my god. _Are you talking_?"

'Cause how else is someone supposed to react a talking scarecrow, am I right?

"Yes! Indeed I am! The hallucinations should be over with now, so if you don't mind, what did you see?" He asked again, and pulled a notepad and pen out his pocket.

So Quinn told him about all the crazy crap she'd just seen in her freaky dream and he wrote it down.

"I appreciate your assistance. It's so rare that a subject capable of speech steals the corn."

"The corn?"

"Oh yes, it's coated in a special toxin I make to keep the crows away. Anything that eats it will know the meaning of _pure terror_. The experience is so primal and horrific, since it's based around the subject's own mind and the fears that they themselves create, that many creatures feel physical pain at the very notion of returning to this field. It's my job to keep things away, and nobody steals corn from me twice."

"I guess that makes sense, but what happens when the people who own this field eat the corn? Do they just wash the toxin off?"

"Oh, heavens no! You can't wash it off! That would mean that every time it rains, I'd have to redo the entire field! No, no, you absolutely cannot wash it off."

"Well, how are people supposed to eat it?"

Scarecrow thought for a little while with his hand on his chin like a professor, and then he said:

"That's not my problem. All I have to do is scare crows and corn thieves, and I'm a master of fear."

"But… Um…"

"Look, I have a job description around her somewhere. I frighten things, I don't have anything to do with quality control or maintaining the corn's edibility."

"Well, I guess you do what they pay you for."

"For the most part, yes. Though I must confess that I…" he hesitated, "I'm not very good at keeping away the Nightwing."

Quinn wrinkled up her face.

"What's the Nightwing?"

"It's a large black and blue bird that lives in the west. It doesn't care for me, because I frightened all of the robins away. It's not just the crows I need to worry about, you see. But the Nightwing is sort of the king of the birds, and well… He's too clever by half, he knows not to eat the corn, and I would very much like to find out what he's most afraid of so that I can drive him away."

"Well! I'm on my way to the Green City to see the Great and Powerful Ra's. He's gonna help me get back to Kansas or wherever the hell I'm from, so maybe he can help you too!"

The Scarecrow didn't seem impressed.

"He's not Great and Powerful, he's a windbag and a terrorist. (But I suppose a terrorist might know a thing or two about terrorizing things.) Fine. I'll go with you. I may lose some research opportunities here, but who knows what we'll find in the field?"

While they were walking, Scarecrow offered to carry Haha for a little while, since he didn't get tired as quickly as Quinn and hadn't been walking all day and hadn't almost died in a tornado. A little more gumption in him, you know?

"He doesn't bite." Quinn told him as she handed over her beloved hyena.

"I'm not frightened of him," Scarecrow said, "In fact, I'll tell you a secret. There's only one thing in the whole world that I am afraid of."

"Being set on fire or something?"

"No," answered Scarecrow, "Bats."

Well, they walked and walked until they were out of the cornfield and back in all the autumn trees. And the street got all mangled, and the brickwork was torn up and there seemed to be less and less leaves around, so all the trees looked bare and sharp. Poor Scarecrow was tripping over potholes left and right, because those skinny tall guys, they don't always have the best coordination.

"Drat!" He'd say all angry whenever his foot caught. "They should round up all the local masons and shoot them. This is disgraceful."

Scarecrow likes a job well-done or not-done.

"Tell me about Kansas, or wherever it is you come from." He said, trying to get his mind off of his bruised feet.

So Quinn told him, and afterward he was real quiet. She was wondering if maybe he'd ask to go back with her or something.

"That sounds awful," he said, "Insufferable. I have no idea why you'd ever want to leave here and go there."

"Everyone here is crazy!" Quinn tried to explain.

"People are alike wherever you go. Trust me, I'm a psychologist."

What?

No, he really was.

Excuse me, who's telling the story here?

Okay, okay. He's a scarecrow _and_ a psychologist. It was a shared interest for him and Quinn.

_How did he get his doctorate?_ Who are you, Vicki Vale? He got it at the… Scarecrow Distance College. You can do the courses through the mail, and there's not a lot to do when you're in a field all day, so he had lots of time to study. Sometimes, people would come to his field for classes in psychology, and everybody in all the land said that he was the best teacher ever, because nobody ever forgot his lessons.

Okay! So Quinn and Scarecrow were starting to get tired, and it was starting to feel late, and all the stars were blinking out which meant that it was getting time catch a few winks.

"Craney, let me know if you see a place to crash." Quinn said.

Huh?

Craney is the Scarecrow. It's a nickname. Stop interrupting.

They found a little cottage a ways off the road, but it looked like nobody had been living there for awhile. Inside were all kinds of funny machines, but none of them were switched on. There was a writing desk covered in pages and pages of notes with formulas written on them, and a little garbage can filled with crumpled up papers. And there were three refrigerators.

"Wouldn't it be frightening if there was a dead body in each one?" Scarecrow asked in a whisper, watching to see if Quinn would get scared.

But she was so hungry, she was willing to see a dead body or three in her search for some food. Who could say? Maybe one fridge was for dead bodies, one fridge was for dairy and one fridge was for meat. Like a kosher serial killer or something.

Well, the first fridge was all test tubes and blood samples and other medical stuff, but not in a creepy way, in a research way. So she shut that. The second fridge was full of food and thank god! And the third fridge was empty. There _was_ kind of a dead body, but it was actually a cryogenically frozen woman in a stasis unit in the basement. Quinn and Scarecrow decided that whatever was going on in that basement was none of their business, and they headed back upstairs.

After they ate some of the food from the second fridge, they took turns sleeping and keeping watch. In the morning, Scarecrow gave Quinn a big delicious plate of breakfast, and after she ate it she thought that the scorpions came back, and she was trapped in a pit of sand that was filling up and filling up, and then she was a cosmetician and nobody interesting ever came into her beauty shop, and she never had any fun. No fun at all. Then she died.

After she finished barfing, she got real mad at Scarecrow.

"If you put any more toxins in my food, Scarecrow, I'll shove a rabid bat in your shirt and lock you in an unlit basement! I hate you so much!"

Scarecrow just waited patiently with his notebook.

"Did you have the same hallucinations as the first time, or have your fears evolved? Please answer the interview questions truthfully and in as much detail as you can."

So Quinn told him what was different and what was the same and he said that it was all very interesting, and helped her up off the floor and helped her pack a basket of food. Then Quinn picked up Haha and they set back out in the vague and general direction of the Lazarus Pit. The Emerald City. Aw, shit. What was it called? The Green City! They're going to the Green City!

Well, just as they were starting to head back out, they heard a real funny noise. Like a low and sad moan coming through the trees, and it sounded like it was saying just one word.

"Hey," Quinn said, "Was that you?"

"Was that me when?" Scarecrow asked.

"Just now. Was that you moaning?"

"I don't think so."

"You didn't say _Nooooora_?"

"No. I didn't."

They were about to leave when they heard it again. It was low and sad and… and heartbreaking. Oh, one of the very saddest sounds you'll ever hear. It wasn't whiney or nothing, just lonely. Real, real lonely.

"There!" Quinn snapped her fingers, "That was it! Let's go and see who's making that noise."

"And give them a dose of fear toxin!"

"No. Shut up."

They searched all through the bare winter trees, and all around them the air got colder and colder. In a whatchama - a shaft of moonlight - something glimmered just between the trees. Quinn hurried over and was so shocked by what was there, she fell backwards into Scarecrow and nearly knocked Haha out of his arms.

"Holy crap! It's a robot!"

It wasn't really a robot, though. It was a man in a mechanical suit, made of shiny chrome or something, with blue florescent liquid running in tubes all through it. He had a big glass helmet, and inside of it a pair of red goggles covered his eyes. His face was all tired and thin, and his skin was blue. I guess you could say he was frozen in place. He couldn't move at all, because his suit was malfunctioning.

"Please…" Said the man in the suit, "Help me…"

Quinn was so moved by how sad the man's voice was, she nodded straight away.

"What can we do?"

"Pick up that canister and insert it into the port in my back. Hurry. I… I will not live much longer unless you do, and my work… I must save Nora…"

The robot guy couldn't move, so he couldn't point. Quinn had to find where the canister was by following his line of sight. She got up close to his helmet to see where his eyeballs were pointed, then she looked in that same direction and BINGO! There it was.

"How did this happen to you?" Scarecrow asked while Quinn fetched the canister.

"Penguin."

"I hate Penguin."

"Everyone hates him. I don't think he knows."

Quinn picked up a big metal tube of blue liquid and pushed in into a slot on the ice man's back, which kind of looked like a big battery pack. As soon as she did, there was a charging up noise, like when you turn on a computer, and all the blue parts on him glowed brighter and he started to move.

"Thank you for your assistance. You've saved my life, and my wife's. How did you happen to come by here? I chose this location because of its isolation, I wasn't expecting anyone to find me in time."

"We're on our way to the Green City to see Ra's. He's going to send me home to Kansas or wherever, and he's going to tell Scarecrow what the Nightwing is afraid of."

Mr. Freeze - that's the robot man's name - thought for a little while.

"I've heard of this Ra's al Ghul. Some say he has access to an underground spring with amazing healing qualities. Perhaps…"

He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the cottage where Quinn and Scarecrow had come from.

"Yes," he said quietly to himself, "Perhaps…"

"Um…" Quinn said to him, "You can come with us, if you want. All you gotta do is carry the hyena for a shift."

"He will be almost weightless to me. This suit enhances many attributes, chief among them is my physical strength."

"Could you carry him the whole way?"

"No."

So Quinn, Haha, Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze set back out in what Mr. Freeze swore to them was the right direction. And it was a good thing that they met Mr. Freeze, because very soon they came across a place in the road where a pillar with a big gargoyle on it had toppled part way down and knocked into a street lamp, and it was all really dangerous, but Mr. Freeze moved all the rubble thanks to his enhanced strength and cleared the path so that it was safe to cross. Which was real nice of him.

"So, what's the deal with, uh, Mrs. Freeze?" Quinn asked while they walked.

And he told her. And it was so freaking sad that's there's no way I'm gonna tell _you_, because the last thing I need is for you to burst into tears again. So the important part is: she was sick, he froze her while he tried to find a cure, then his funding was cut… I'll skip that part. Anyway, now he's an ice man and all he wants is for Nora to get better. Got it? And no questions about it! Even if you're confused!

Okay, so the walking got more and more difficult, and the road got less and less paved until there wasn't a single cobblestone. Just a dirt path, and Scarecrow was bitching and bitching the whole way like you wouldn't believe. But soon, even Scarecrow stopping making noise. They were in a swampy spot, where the air was thick and heavy and all around them were noises. Real creepy noises.

"Born… on… a Monday…"

Nobody said anything. They moved as slow as they could and quieter than ghosts.

There were splashes of water nearby and far away, and a mist curling all around their ankles.

"I don't suppose anyone is frightened?" Scarecrow whispered in a trembling voice.

"Nope." Quinn said, but her voice was trembling too.

"Absolutely not." Mr. Freeze added, a little too quickly.

"What a shame. I'm not frightened either, of course."

After some more totally-not-frightened hurrying through the swamp, Quinn whispered to Mr. Freeze:

"How long until we're out of here? Just because the moisture is bad for my hair."

"I can't say, I've never travelled this way myself. The traders who bring me supplies and the travellers who pass by my cottage say that it's a long journey through dangerous places, but the land around the Green City is safe and protected. I'm not worried. You have your Joker card and your hyena, I have my suit and my freeze gun, and Scarecrow will be the first to die."

Scarecrow cleared his throat and made a big show of how offended he was, but in all honesty? If I had to throw one of them under the bus, it'd be him. Mr. Freeze has a big ice gun and super strength, and Scarecrow keeps dosing my… that is… _Quinn's_ food. So if _Quinn_ had to choose between them, she would probably choose Mr. Freeze. In this totally made up story that is not about real people.

Oh.

Yeah.

Well, Mr. Freeze in the story is different from Mr. Freeze in real life, because Mr. Freeze in real life… doesn't live in a magic kingdom. And the real Joker doesn't… steal dead people's shoes. Very often. Anymore. And there are lots of talking Scarecrows! I can think of at least… one!

Look, do you want to hear the rest of this?

Okay! So are you gonna keep asking questions instead of listening?

Cuz if you interrupt one more time, I might not finish.

Now, everybody was making their way through the swamp when there was a big roar! A ferocious noise like a hundred lawnmowers all going at once! And this big huge zombie with grey skin and a tattered suit bursts out of the swamp and swats Scarecrow down like he was actually made of straw. Like, he went spinning, you know? And everybody's thinking: Craney is dead. You cannot survive being hit in the face by Solomon Grundy.

Then the zombie picks up Freeze and starts crushing him between his two giant hands. Quinn could hear all the defensive protocols or whatever in the suit just firing up like crazy, and then Freeze got so cold, not even the undead could stand to hold onto him anymore. It stung Grundy's hands real bad, so he got all mad and smashed Freeze down onto the ground.

In all the confusion, little Haha found himself running loose. And with that cute little red bow in his fur, he went racing over to Grundy making one hell of a noise. So Grundy made a hell of a noise back.

"Christened on Tuesday!" He roared, and went like he was going to bash poor sweet Haha into the next world, same as he did to Scarecrow.

Well! Quinn was not about to let _that_ happen!

"Get away from my hyena, you son of a bitch!"

She picked up the freeze gun and aimed it at the big zombie's hands. She'd never fired it before, and her aim was off because the thing weighs the same as a beer truck and has a kickback that would take out Captain Marvel. So this beam of ice barely glances the back of the monster's knuckles, and right away he starts whimpering and looking at his hand. Like a kid with a bee sting.

Then he looked up at Quinn, all confused and hurt - like emotionally wounded, the ice blast wasn't that bad.

"Married on Wednesday?"

"Don't you try no Poor-Brain-Dead-Zombie, he-don't-know-any-better crap on me! You just tried to kill my hyena! Fair's fair!"

Grundy looked around at the all the crap he'd done, and frowned.

"Nu-uh," He shook his head, "No Croc."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but you just killed Scarecrow and crushed Freeze and tried to eat Haha, so say you're freaking prayers, punk!" Quinn hoisted the freeze gun higher, so that the next ice beam would hit him in the head. Haha sat down next to her ankles and smiled his cute little hyena smile.

"Scarecrow… Buried on Sunday?" Grundy shook his head, looking over at where the scarecrow lay all crumpled up in a heap.

"I think it's broken…" Scarecrow murmured and began to move a little.

"What's broken?" Quinn called to him.

"My whole skeleton. I think."

"You're fine. Walk it off."

Scarecrow got up and started hobbling around. Then, real gentle-like, Quinn knelt down next to Mr. Freeze, who rolled his head to one side in that big glass helmet.

"Give me my gun." He managed to croak out.

"Are you gonna shoot the zombie with it?"

"Yes. Of course."

She looked over at the big, confused fella, who was still searching around like he lost he keys.

"Not Croc… on Saturday…"

"This is gonna sound nuts, Freezey, but I don't think he meant to hurt us. I'm gonna talk to him a little bit, see what's what."

"How naïve."

"Don't you call me names, or I swear to god I'll stomp right through your helmet and let you boil in this swampy air. Now stay put."

"You may regret this." Freeze sounded pissed, but he couldn't do nothing about it. If he falls down a certain way, he can't get back up without help. Like a turtle, you know?

So Quinn went up to the big zombie, and she said:

"What's your name, fella?"

"Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday."

"That's nice. I don't know what day I was born on, cuz I'm an orphan from Kansas or someplace, and I live with my Aunt and Uncle, and I'm trying to get home, and that's why we're all going to the Green City to see Ra's al Ghul."

"Green…" Grundy said all wondrous, like somebody had been talking about mountains of treasure or something, "Demon… bad."

"Uh-huh. So I was wondering-"

"Revenge on a Monday!"

"Sure, sure. Monday's are a nice full day for you-"

"Revenge! _Revenge!_"

Quinn didn't know what to say anymore. She'd thought maybe Grundy would want to apologize for attacking them, or explain why he did it, but he'd been electrocuted and resurrected so many times, his brains were fried. If they'd ever been there at all.

"Well, Scarecrow needs to go find out what the Nightwing is frightened of, and Mr. Freeze wants to see if he can find a cure for his wife, so we'd better hit the road."

"Travel… on Thursday…"

"Boy, you sure do like the days of the week. See you around."

By then, Scarecrow, who was walking a little funny but seemed fine, had helped Mr. Freeze back onto his feet, and Freeze had picked up Haha and they were pretty much getting ready to leave whether Quinn came along or not.

"My freeze gun, Quinn. Give it to me."

"Alright. But don't shoot Grundy with it. He's got some serious cognitive delays or something, and I really don't think he meant to hurt us."

"If he tries to attack again, I will defend myself."

They walked along for a little while, and it was probably for sure that all of them knew Grundy was following along behind. It was kind of hard to miss his big shadow, and the funny noise his feet made when they scuffed, and how every now and then he'd just quietly say to himself: "Born on a Monday." And the smell. There ain't nothing worse than a rotten-egg zombie smell.

But, for some reason, nobody in the group said anything about it. I guess they were all hoping that he'd get bored and go away. Or maybe they were waiting for somebody else to say something first.

Anyway, the important thing is that it was _awkward_.

Then Quinn turned to Scarecrow, because it was her turn to carry Haha. But Haha was gone!

"Scarecrow! Where the hell is Haha?!"

Scarecrow jerked his thumb over at Grundy, who was carrying Haha all soft and sweet, like a gorilla with a baby. You ever see that? Gorillas are pretty good with babies. It's cute. Just don't try and take 'em away, you know?

"What did you do?!" Quinn shouted at Scarecrow.

"If he's going to come with us, he has to take a turn carrying the hyena." Scarecrow shrugged.

"It seems reasonable to me," Freeze nodded. "He hasn't harmed the animal."

In fact, Grundy was petting Haha real nice. It looked like even though he'd made a difficult first impression, the two of them were making friends. Which was kind of cute. So Quinn thought to herself that as long as Grundy didn't try to eat Haha, this was a good thing. And if he did try to eat him, Freeze would shoot and everything would probably be okay anyway.

But before long, it was time to settle in for some sleep. Only there weren't any cottages or anything nice, so they had to build a shelter on the side of the road. They had what was left of the food they brought from Mr. Freeze's house, and Quinn realized that now that there were so many of them, they wouldn't have anything for breakfast. She was a little worried, what with their new friend.

"Grundy? Don't try to eat any of us, okay?"

"Not Croc."

"Huh? Sure. Whatever. If you try to eat us, Freeze will shoot you. Got it?"

"Cold… cold Sunday."

Scarecrow starting talking about finding out what Grundy was scared of, but everybody shut that down real fast. The last thing they needed was some high-as-a-kite mega-zombie hopped up on fear toxin hallucinating that everybody was bugs that needed to be smushed. It took awhile, but eventually Scarecrow was convinced that his own safety was slightly more important than his research, and everybody went to sleep.

When it was time to wake up and start on the road again, nobody could have guessed how much of a shit storm was about to come their way.

Grundy retied the bow in Haha's fur, and it was kind of weird because for some reason his bow was neater than Quinn's had been. But whatever, he was alive in the 1800's or something, and maybe back then men learned how to tie ribbons real nice. In order to get a wife, I guess.

The five of them walked along the dirt path, and the swamp got heavier and there were those trees with the hanging moss, and it was kind of creepy, and even though Quinn wanted to say how creepy it was (cuz when you talk about being afraid, you get less afraid) she couldn't say anything because she didn't want Scarecrow to start experimenting on her.

Anyway, they came across this big huge chasm. Like an enormous ditch, and down at the bottom was one of the concrete sewer openings, and some water was trickling out. But the river was empty, so it was just a steep hundred foot fall. And there wasn't no way to cross it. Down at the bottom were some boards on those white buoy things that kind of look like milk jugs, and it was probably one of those old-style floating bridges when the water was high, but the water wasn't high, so it was about as useful as a condom at a… never mind. Nobody said that part. It wasn't useful is all.

Ahem!

So everybody was really bummed out because it looked like the journey was over. Oh no! We gotta turn around because of this impassable chasm and-

Just a second, sweetie.

It's on the shelf next to the jack-in-the-box. What does he want it for?

Is Batman here?

Good. It's too early. Okay, well don't let him use it on you.

That's because you're new. Now get lost, I'm telling the kid a story.

Where was I? Oh yeah! So they'd all decided to turn around and try to get on with their lives, and Quinn was very sad because she didn't think she could find a nice place for herself in a land full of crazy people, but she figured maybe she could find the Joker again somehow.

"Grundy jump."

Quinn looked to see that Solomon Grundy had Haha tucked under one of his arms, and he picked up Scarecrow like a rag-doll and tucked him under the other - and Scarecrow was screaming and screaming all kinds of insults and swear words and anything he could think to get Grundy to put him down.

"Buffoon! Cretin! Release me this instant, you hideous atrocity! You undead accident of fate! Please! No!"

The last part was because Grundy was taking a run straight at the chasm and then - Swoop! THUD!

He jumped clear over it and landed so hard the whole ground shook. He put down Scarecrow and handed him Haha, and poor Scarecrow, who was still all banged up from the day before, kind of staggered around in a circle then fell on his butt. He looked more than a little stupefied by the whole situation. I guess it was a bad experience for the poor guy, but at least Grundy didn't just decide to throw him!

Swoop! THUD!

Grundy jumped back over and the ground shook all again. And the thing is, sweetie, there are some places where you don't want to shake the ground or make a lot of noise. But nobody knew that and poor Grundy was too simple to remember that lesson, even though he'd had the opportunity to learn it a few times. Well, he jumped over with Quinn next and shook the ground, then jumped back and seemed nervous about picking up Freeze, since the last time he did he got frostbite on his hands.

Quinn couldn't hear, but it looked like Mr. Freeze was trying to let Grundy know there was a truce between them, and as long as Grundy safely jumped Freeze across, he wouldn't get stung by cold. So Grundy made the jump with Freeze and everything was okay, they all went walking along and things felt good.

Until they got to the second chasm. Which was the same as the first chasm, except wider and deeper.

"Too big… no jump… day…" Grundy mumbled.

He was all worn out from the last jump, since Freeze was really heavy in his suit. So Grundy sat down with another big THUD! Panting like a dog who'd been running around the yard all day.

It was frustrating, cuz just when they'd solved one problem, another showed up right away. And it was the same problem only bigger! But that's life, kid. Don't forget it.

"Look at this!" Scarecrow said, pointing into the bushes, "A fire hydrant."

"So what? You want Haha to pee on it?" Quinn was getting a little snippy, because this was turning into a really, really tough quest, you know? Like, just _one time_ she'd like something to be easy and chasm free and convenient. But no. It's always chasm, chasm, chasm.

At least none of 'em were full of acid.

"If we open it up, the water pressure might be high enough to reach across the gap. Then Freeze can blast it with his gun, and we shall have a bridge of ice." Scarecrow explained very patiently.

"Scarecrow! That's a great idea! I'm sorry I've been so mean to you, I was just angry because you kept drugging me! But you're a good friend to have, and I'm so glad we brought you along!" Quinn gave him a nice friendly hug, and it was a good moment, because Scarecrow didn't make it weird or jab her with a needle.

Some people, you know, they just need to feel validated. Scarecrow is like that. Appreciation is important. Of course, Mr. Freeze doesn't really give a shit about validating other people, so he said:

"A reasonable idea, Scarecrow. One might even suspect your head was full of brains instead of straw."

And Scarecrow looked Mr. Freeze dead in the eye, and _he_ said:

"People are only nice to you because they feel sorry about your wife."

They didn't say nothing else to each other, they just went over to the fire hydrant and got started on the bridge. Well, it was about halfway frozen when Haha's fur stood all up and he looked into the swamp and started making whimpering noises, like he was scared.

"Grew worse on Friday…" Solomon Grundy said quietly, and he was staring into the trees too.

Quinn looked, but all she could see were the trees and a chain link fence with a toxic substances sign on in, rattling back and forth in the wind.

"Solomon Grundy," said a gravel voice that was far away and right up close, "I've got your scent."

"Croc." Grundy nodded and put Haha down on the ground.

Haha was shaking and whimpering and he hurried over to Freeze and Scarecrow as fast as he could. Quinn turned her head to watch him go and was about to follow after him to make sure he was okay, but a dark shape moved like lightning at the corner of her eye. She turned just in time to see the Killer Croc - half man, half crocodile - lunging towards Solomon Grundy with his sharp teeth bared and his reptile eyes glowing in the moonlight.

With one big clawed hand, he tore at Grundy and ripped across the front of his suit and into his pale, undead chest. Quinn was too frightened to scream, almost too frightened to move. Croc had his big, terrifying mouth open and it looked like he was going to rip Grundy's throat out with it.

"Born on a MONDAY!" Grundy cried out and pushed Killer Croc away from him, then smashed one wrecking ball of a fist into his head. Bam! Probably broke all the bones in Croc's ear!

Well, when that happened it woke Quinn up a little. She went running towards the ice bridge and scooped up Haha.

"Go! Go! Go!" She shouted at Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze, but the bridge wasn't done yet.

There wasn't any time!

She jumped onto the ice that was there and started running. When Freeze and Scarecrow noticed Killer Croc, they did the same. A blast of sub-zero blue air shot out from the freeze gun just ahead of Quinn's feet, and as soon as the ice was there, she was on it. She was lucky she didn't get her feet caught in the ice beam.

When they got across the bridge, they saw Killer Croc notice them and come running for them. He'd done something to Grundy while they were on the move, and now the poor big lug was sprawled out on the ground. Croc was coming at the bridge.

"The gun must recharge! It cannot fire for another fifteen minutes!" Freeze panicked, "The bridge took too much of its energy reserves!"

Croc was just about to put one big scaly clodhopper on the ice bridge, when Grundy threw his whole body at him and knocked him sideways. Wham! Nobody ever saw it coming! In the next second - the very next breath - Grundy was up and on the bridge, chugging along it as fast as he could, but Killer Croc was right behind him.

As soon as he was on the other side, Grundy spun around.

"SOLOMON GRUNDY!" He yelled, loud enough to shake half the trees around us, and he smashed his fists down on the bridge.

_KRA-KOOM!_

The ice shattered into a million pieces, falling like glitter into the chasm below. And Croc fell with it, grabbing at the air with his blood-stained hands and cursing as he fell:

"I'll find you! I'll tear your flesh and crush your bones!"

And then SPLAT! His body hit the sludge in the ground below, and you could hear it sucking him in. Same as when you drop a teaspoon in a mudpack.

They all sat on the edge of the chasm, catching their breath and pulling themselves together. Scarecrow pulled out his notebook and interviewed them about the experience and asked them to rate their terror levels at different points on a scale of one-to-ten. Naturally, everybody lowballed their numbers. Except Grundy who reported a terror level of "Tuesday" at every point during the ordeal.

Well, as soon as they were calm, they decided to hurry the hell out of that swampy forest. Cuz first Grundy, then Croc, I mean what next?

After they made it out of the haunted swamp, things were pretty okay until they got to the river. There was a bridge, but it looked like it had been blown up with dynamite, and somebody spray painted a penguin on the far side, so three guesses who was behind _that_ little piece of genius. Take it from me, kid - DON'T BURN YOUR BRIDGES. And don't blow 'em up with dynamite, neither.

As luck would have it, there was a raft tied to the bridge, with two long poles resting on top of it. It wasn't easy figuring out how to balance everybody and not tip the whole thing, but it worked out okay if Quinn and Scarecrow stood on the sides to do the rowing, and Mr. Freeze and Solomon Grundy sat kind of across from each other, to stop it from see-sawing. Everything was going real smoothly, until they got to the middle of the river, where the tide was really strong and Quinn was too short to make her pole reach all the way to the bottom.

"This is terrible!" Scarecrow cried, "If the water takes hold of us, this river leads into the west! That's the land of the Nightwing and he won't be pleased to see us!"

"And I won't be able to get back to Kansas or wherever!"

"And I shall never know if Lazarus can cure Nora."

"Born on a Monday…"

Well, in order to try and get the raft to the shore, Scarecrow did a very noble thing. Or maybe he was so worried about getting caught by the Nightwing he was willing to try something stupid. With all his might, he pushed his pole into the riverbed and tried to steer the raft. The first time it worked, but the second time the pole got stuck and before he could pull it back out - or let go - the raft was swept away, and poor Scarecrow was left clinging to the pole in the middle of the river.

"Goodbye, Scarecrow!" Mr. Freeze called out.

"You bastard! Freeze an ice floe with your gun so that I can get down!"

"I cannot. The gun is not safe to use until it has fully recharged."

Quinn was confused, because before Mr. Freeze had said that it would only take fifteen minutes for the gun to recharge, but maybe that was just how long it would take before he could shoot Killer Croc in the face with it. She wasn't an expert on cryogenics or nothing, so how could she say what was what?

"Buried on Sunday!" Grundy called out to their friend as the raft pulled them further and further away, and he tried to wave goodbye.

All around them was the roar of the river and the distant cursing of the Scarecrow. Oh! It was ever so sad to leave him behind!

A little further on, where the water wasn't so deep, Grundy reached down and used his big tree trunk arms to push the raft to shore. When they landed, they all jumped off the raft and made their way back towards the main path. Freeze said the best idea was to follow back along the river until they came to the bridge, and that would take them to the main road again.

Grundy went along slowly behind them, looking around all the time.

"Scarecrow?" He kept asking, and it was starting to get upsetting. Like his puppy was dead and we didn't want to tell him.

Scarecrow went to a farm, Grundy! He's got lots of room to run around and chase rabbits and find out what they're most afraid of! He's so happy! They've even got a girl Scarecrow for him to play with!

Anyway, they got back to the bridge, and they saw Scarecrow, still hanging onto that pole and just cursing himself blue in the face. Scarecrow's pretty good at cursing. You wouldn't think it, but those erudite types can get pretty creative when they want to.

"Aw, crap." Said Quinn, "It just doesn't feel right to leave him there, after all we've been through together…"

They all stood, looking at their friend's predicament and wondering if there was anything they could do. Like get a long stick, or see if anybody further upstream had a boat, or _something_.

While they were standing there wondering, a man came up behind them. He was handsome, like an old time matinee idol…

It's a movie star.

Yeah, well a matinee is a movie that they show in the afternoon and it used to be that ladies would go see them together without their fellas, and they were usually soapy and usually had a guy with a good jaw and wavy dark hair and a little moustache. And this guy looked like that. Real handsome, but old-fashioned handsome. You get it?

Uh.

Okay. Just picture a movie star.

So he walks up behind them and notices what a weird group they are. I mean, you got a cute little blonde holding a hyena, you got a snowman in a robo-suit, and you got an enormous animated corpse in his Sunday best. And they're all standing on this blown up bridge, looking at this Scarecrow holding desperately to this wooden pole and just screaming his lungs out about how he's going to destroy the world with their own worst fears. Who wouldn't stop? Who wouldn't stop and think to themselves how weird that was?

"This _is_ a strange sight," The Movie Star Man shook his head, "And I've seen a few oddities in my day. What exactly's going on?"

Quinn shrugged and decided to tell him.

"Well, all of us were journeying to the Green City to see the Great and Powerful Ra's al Ghul - for assorted personal reasons - when our raft was caught in this stream, and our beloved friend Scarecrow got stuck on that pole and we don't know how to rescue him."

"Hmm," said the man, "I guess I can help."

And before anybody could say another word, the handsome stranger stretched out his arm. But it wasn't anything like when a normal person stretches out their arm! It was crazy! It was all brown clay and it expanded and stretched all how he needed it to, until his hand was as big as Grundy's!

He picked up Scarecrow and pulled him back onto the bridge and set him down.

"Well!" Said Scarecrow, "Thank you a great deal!"

"Not at all. Don't think another thing about it."

What do you mean _why did he help_? In this world there are people who do one another favours just because it's nice. And also, maybe he mentioned that he knew Joker and was told to lend Quinn a hand if he came across her. Cuz Clayface and Joker are pals!

Sure. Who else would it be?

No, sweetie, Bane's not like that.

"I thought I'd be stuck in that confounded river forever!" Scarecrow said once they were back on the road, "It didn't look like there was a thing to save me! If I ever come upon Clayface again, I'll have to remember not to expose him to any toxins. I owe him a debt."

On and on they walked, listening to the cricket songs and the hoots of owls. There was a full moon that was real close to the ground. Like any second, a cow was gonna jump right over it. But it wasn't a white moon, it was an orange one and everybody called it Scarecrow's moon, because it had brought him some luck. It was very pretty on the other side of that river, and all the plants looked healthier and stronger than the ones in the swamp. And there were flowers. Purple ones and white ones, and big clusters of bright red ones that looked so beautiful, everybody stopped to admire them. Because even in the always-night time, they looked so bright and vibrant it almost hurt Quinn's eyes to look at them.

"Married on Wednesday." Grundy said with a big smile.

The further they went, there were way more poppies and way less of the other flowers, until all the field around them was nothing but red. In Arkham, there are beautiful flowers and dangerous flowers and flowers that are beautiful and dangerous at the same time, and these poppies were beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Because when everybody was walking past them, they started giving off this pink mist in little puffs that filled up the air. And all these little vines started moving between them, like snakes coming to spy on the action.

The pink stuff in the air put whoever breathed it in to sleep, and if they didn't get away from it, they'd sleep forever and ever and ever until their internal organs gave up and they died. But how was Quinn supposed to know that? And how was little Haha and how was Grundy?

Mr. Freeze was okay, because he was safe inside his helmet, breathing filtered air. And Scarecrow was fine, because he always had a gas mask on, to make sure he didn't accidentally breathe in his own airborne fear toxins. So they didn't even notice the change in the air, and with the orange moon it was hard to tell that everything had turned pink.

"Oh," Quinn said, "Little Haha has fallen asleep." And just then, she slumped down into the flowers and started to snore. Cuz sometimes women snore, and it's just reality. Nobody should feel bad about it.

Anyway, when that happened, Scarecrow figured out what was going on.

"Grundy! Ran as fast as you can that way! We can carry Quinn, but we'd never be able to get you out of here!"

Ordinarily, Scarecrow wouldn't really care if Solomon Grundy died, but Grundy had jumped him over that chasm and saved them from Killer Croc, and Scarecrow was still in a good mood since Clayface rescued him from the river, so he was feeling pretty generous.

"Died on a Saturday!" Grundy nodded, coughing through the sleep perfume, and he did what he was told.

Now, Mr. Freeze won't let a blonde girl die. It's practically a scientific law. So, after Grundy started running, Freeze picked up Quinn and started to carry her, while Scarecrow carried Haha.

"We must hurry." Freeze said, and they went as quickly through the fields as they could.

But, just short of where the field ended and the fresh grass began, they found Solomon Grundy asleep in a big heap. He had run as far as he could, but the perfume of the flowers was too strong and in the end, he went down like a ton of bricks. But he almost, almost made it.

"Such a shame," Freeze shook his head, "He came so close. But perhaps here, in endless sleep, he will find the memories he once lost. Perhaps in his dreams, he will be free."

Oh…

Oh shit…

I just made myself so sad!

Okay, give me a second.

Wow.

Damn that Mr. Freeze! He always makes me cry! And now I'm thinking about his wife, and crap. Crap, crap, crap. I need a tissue.

Alright. Okay. I'm good.

So Freeze and Craney put Quinn in the soft fresh grass and waited for the breeze to wake her up, and they couldn't move Grundy without help because he was too big. But don't worry, everything is going to be okay.

Over the horizon, they could see a creature running towards them with the full moon high in sky behind him. It was a hideous werewolf! And it was chasing a beautiful woman with long flowing red hair and green skin. Just as they came towards them, Quinn woke up.

Quinn wasn't from around there and as far as she was concerned, werewolves chasing ladies need to be stopped. So she grabbed the freeze gun and shot it while it was still attached to Freeze's hip.

BZZZZT! Instant wolfie ice cube!

It was a lucky shot, but she hit him and that's all that counts.

As soon as he got all frozen, he changed under the ice from a hideous werewolf to a hideous man! A real snooty looking jerk with a unibrow.

"Congratulations," Mr. Freeze said, "You just saved the biggest nuisance I can think of."

"Oh come on! A werewolf was gonna catch her and eat her!"

"_Tony_?" Scarecrow scoffed, "Tony couldn't catch a cold. She was probably trying to bait him into the flowers. I suppose she's responsible for those mutated poppies…"

The redhead walked over, and it looked like she'd actually been a little bothered by the werewolf chasing her. So Quinn decided that Freeze and Scarecrow were being jerks and making assumptions, and that she'd done the right thing by freezing that punk. Men don't know everything, they just think they do.

"Thanks for the save back there. I thought he was a nice guy, but he turned out to be nothing but an animal. I'm Ivy."

"I'm Quinn."

"Quinn. Cute. You're not from around here, are you?"

"My house fell out of a tornado a few days ago. I've been trying to get to the Green City."

"Ugh. The _Green_ City. They call it that, but there's nothing natural or green about it. The colour comes from the treated Lazarus water that runs through it to give everlasting life to that madman who runs it. What would a nice girl like you want with a place like that?"

"I need Ra's al Ghul's help to get back to Kansas or wherever the hell I'm from. Scarecrow wants to know the secret of the Nightwing's fears, and Mr. Freeze wants to see if there's a cure for his wife, and Solomon Grundy…"

Quinn looked around and noticed for the first time that their party was missing a guest.

"Hey!" She said, "Where's Grundy?"

"We lost him among the poppies," Freeze explained, "We could not save him."

"Oh no!" Quinn cried and started to feel tears welling up in her eyes. She was under a lot of stress and she hadn't been eating right, and that can make you very emotional about funny things.

"Well whose genius idea was it to go through my poppies?" Ivy asked with her hands on her hips, "She just fell off the turnip truck, but you two pathetic excuses for mankind ought to know better."

"Are we to assume that _every_ flower has been genetically altered by you to be hostile?" Mr. Freeze said back, all touchy, "Should we avoid all examples of plant life? Or merely most of them?"

Ivy rolled her eyes.

"I suppose I owe you a favour. What's the story with this friend of yours?"

They told her all about Grundy and him being a mentally-challenged zombie, and Scarecrow explained how Grundy hadn't been able to get all the way out of the field, and when they were done explaining it all, Ivy waved her hand like a fancy duchess and said:

"Fine. I'll get him for you."

It wasn't hard for them to retrace the path back to Grundy. He's kind of hard to miss, even when he's lying down. Well the first thing was that, for a little while, Ivy changed her mind about helping. But she does that a lot, and if you can get her past whatever it is she thinks is the problem, then you're usually good. It's all about communication. Nobody tries to communicate with her, and if you don't do that, you can't figure out what the problem is.

"My babies! He's crushed them!" Meaning the flowers he landed on when he fell over unconscious, see.

That's a pretty easy fix. You just say:

"Ivy, the flowers put him to sleep. He can't help falling over and he can't help how big he is. I'm sure he didn't mean to crush anything, but what else was he gonna do? There's nothing to land on around here _except_ the flowers. It's sad, but it's life."

"No! I won't help him! He's a wretched murderer!"

"Well, let's be real for a second here. Put up your hand if you're _not _a wretched murderer." So Quinn got to put her hand up but nobody else did. And, really, one time she had veal in a restaurant, so she didn't put her hand up anyway.

"You know…" Scarecrow started to say, but whatever it was it was probably just gonna make Ivy madder at them, so Quinn stomped on his foot and told him to keep his trap shut.

"So, please," Quinn asked, "Can you help us figure something out?"

Really, really reluctantly, Poison Ivy told all the vines in the garden to pick Grundy up, and they held him in the air like a hammock, all twisty and strong. Then they set him down in the grass and retreated back into the field.

"There." Ivy said, with her arms folded and a little pout on her face. Petulant-like.

"Thanks, Ivy! You're a real pal! If you ever need anything, let me know, okay?"

"Come back soon for a visit, Quinn. But don't bring any more men with you."

She says stuff like that because she's anti-man. But, you know, just cuz you wanna be pro-woman doesn't mean you gotta be anti-man. That's Ivy's hang-up.

Now, after Grundy woke up and everybody had said goodbye and Ivy had disappeared back into her garden, they noticed that they had gotten real close to the Green City. They could see it shining on the hill, lit up from inside, brass buildings and tubes of green liquid and a couple of big generators like in Frankenstein. You know, those Tesla thingies with the electrical currents running up and down in bolts of trapped lightning.

"Greeeen…" Grundy said, all mesmerized. Boy, I'll tell ya. Solomon Grundy sure does love shiny green things. Little known fact: if you ever want to distract him, get a green laser pointer and he'll chase the dot. Cats do that too.

Leading up the city itself was something sort of like the Great Wall of China, but at the end of it was a humungous gate with a big giant demon head door knocker. Kind of ostentatious, to be honest. A little much.

All over the walls were shadowy figures crouching like in them anime cartoons. Some of them had swords, but all of them were ladies and all of them were wearing masks that covered up the bottom half of their faces. Even from far away, it didn't look like a very warm welcome.

"Holy crap! Are those ninjas?!"

"I've heard of them," Mr. Freeze said, "They are trained assassins and Ra's al Ghul's elite guard."

"Hey, Freezey?" Quinn asked, "You ever hear about anybody, you know, actually _meeting_ Ra's al Ghul?"

"Not directly. I've met people who have come and gone from the Green City, but none who have themselves met this Ra's al Ghul. I understand that he has a throne room, a Lazarus Chamber, where those who seek an audience with him are led. But beyond that, I do not know."

"Oh." Quinn seemed disappointed, "But, I mean, we're probably going to be able to see him. Right?"

"If they don't let us in, we will freeze the marrow in their bones and enter the Lazarus Chamber by force."

Quinn rolled her eyes at herself and made one of those raspberry noise you do when you've just asked a really dumb question. Of course they were going to see Ra's! It didn't matter if he let them in or not, they had a freeze gun and fear toxin and a freaking zombie who could beat the pulp outta Killer Croc.

Yeah. They were getting' in to see the Great and Powerful Ra's. One way or another.

Okay, so at the gate they get stopped by this broad in real tight low-rise pants. Like, how does she sit down in those? If you're gonna go that low, you need a belt. Anyway, I guess we'll be nice and say she had exotic features, and a headband that screamed 90's girl group, and a general air of superiority that may or may not have been the most obnoxious thing ever.

Hey, at your school you got any of those popular girls with parents who just _buy them everything_? And they act all entitled, and they got highlights in their hair even though they're twelve or something, and for some reason all the teachers love them and it's like: do you not see what a high-maintenance mess this girl is? And why are all the boys in love with her? She's creepy obsessive. Writing their names in hearts on her twenty-eight dollar binder, with her fifteen dollar pen…

Yeah?

What's her name?

They always got names like that.

Well, this was like the grown-up version of her.

"Why have you come here?" She demanded.

"I'm Quinn of Kansas or a Kansas-like location, and these are my friends. I was trapped in this place when a tornado dropped my house on a corrupt psychologist, and I was told by a handsome clown that a man named Ra's al Ghul would have the power to help me get home. This is the Scarecrow, and he'd also like to talk to Ra's al Ghul, because he wants to know what the Nightwing is most frightened of in all the world. And this is Mr. Freeze, whose wife is very ill and frozen in his basement for preservation purposes, and he was hoping Ra's al Ghul would let him take a travel flask of Lazarus goo. And this is Solomon Grundy… he just kind of follows us around, I guess. But we've gotten real used to him, you know?"

"Cyrus Gold…" The chick in the skanky pants said, narrowing her eyes at the hulking zombie in front of her, "If he's returned here, it's surely to kill my father."

"Oh." Quinn looked over her shoulder at Grundy, who - she remembered - had brought up something about revenge when Ra's al Ghul had first been mentioned to him, "You gonna try to kill the Great and Powerful Ra's, Grundy?"

"Revenge… on a Monday…"

"Huh. Whaddaya know?" Quinn shrugged, "I guess we can leave him out here. He's like a moth on a lamp with all this glowing green around. He won't try nothing."

"_Why_ does Grundy want to kill your father?" Scarecrow asked, because he was a nosy bastard and a researcher at heart.

"His resurrected form is possible only because of a century-long submersion in a previously unknown source of Lazarus. When my father discovered this, he wished to examine the creature's resilience, so he killed him and revived him multiple times. Each time, the creature's mind grew weaker, until no more useful information could be obtained from him. Then my father released him. But, before leaving… _Grundy_, as you call him, attempted to destroy this facility and murder the Head of the Demon. He did not succeed because he could not succeed."

"Uh-huh. Great story. You're all monsters. Now, can we get in to see Ra's al Ghul or what?" Quinn asked.

"I suppose you may have an audience with him. But you must be blindfolded and led to the Chamber with your hands bound behind your back."

Cuz nothing is ever easy with those people. Nothing.

"Grundy, you stay here and look at the shiny green. And be good!"

"Revenge… revenge…"

"Later, Grundy. Revenge is later."

Everybody but Solomon Grundy got blindfolds put on them, and got their hands tied behind them, and it was very hard to do this to Mr. Freeze because of the helmet and the cold, but they managed somehow. One of the guards took Haha and said that she'd go along with them and carry him.

It was all dark under the blindfold, so Quinn could only hear the great big gates opening up, and she felt a hand on her back pushing her along. Guiding her into the Green City and towards her first meeting with Ra's al Ghul.

"Stop." The voice of the woman from the gate said, and so Quinn did.

Then there was some talking in a language none of them knew, and then a big quiet pause and then more yakking and yakking and yakking. They never shut up. Those people _never_ shut up. All of a sudden, the blindfold was off and Quinn was practically knocked over by the brightness of the room. She looked around, expecting the grand Lazarus Chamber, but all she saw was a foyer and a big staircase.

"Ra's al Ghul will not see you tonight," What's-her-name with the pants said, "We will show you to chambers where you may rest and bathe. In twelve hours time, you will be granted your audience."

Not much they could do about that. But what was another twelve hours when it came to the big picture? Quinn followed one of the ninja girls up to a room with a nice view. In fact, from her window, she could stick her head out and see Grundy on the other side of the gate, watching the glowing green water rushing through the glass tubes. He was all fixated and slack-jawed and he didn't move at all.

Haha made himself right at home on some cushions thrown around the floor, and Quinn undid her braids and brushed her hair. Just then, there was a knock on the door. It was one of the servants of the Green City, she'd brought a robe and pyjamas for Quinn and took her dress and her apron away to be cleaned. But Quinn was very careful to make sure she held onto her joker card. When she went to sleep, she put it under her pillow.

It felt like she'd only just closed her eyes when she was woken up eight hours later. They gave her dress back to her, and they brought her a big huge breakfast that was mostly heath foods and this juice which was _so disgusting_, but Quinn was starving so she ate every single thing. In fact, she ate it too fast and gave herself heartburn, and spent the next hour lying on her back on that fancy bed, trying to make herself burp.

Luckily, by the time she was summoned to the Lazarus Chamber, she had it under control.

She met up with Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow in the big room with the staircase, the place they'd gone their separate ways the night before. Both of them looked a little tidier, too. It's hard to tell, since Mr. Freeze is always shiny and Scarecrow wears tattered rags on purpose to be all thematic like, but Quinn thought the robo-suit was shinier and the Scarecrow's outfit was… more artfully arranged. Kind of.

What's-her-name was waiting.

"My father was hesitant to speak with you, but he has decided to be benevolent. You must consider yourselves very fortunate. He will see you one at a time, beginning with you."

She sort of half-pointed at Quinn, who nodded and stepped forward.

The Lazarus Chamber was really weird. It was like a combination between one of those Pharaoh throne rooms and a therapy tub at the YMCA. There was that crazy green water everywhere, more demon carvings and two big pillars with statues carved into them that were holding these fans of those big Aladdin swords. Simmy… simmy? Something like simmy? I can't remember what they're called.

In the middle of it all was this guy in a green cloak, with creepy glowing eyes and salt-and-pepper hair and a pretty dumb choice of facial hair. I mean, you live for a thousand years and you can't figure out how to grow a beard that doesn't make you look like a total jackass? Cuz get this: He's got the _edges_ of a moustache, but no moustache. It goes like here and here, but not here. And mutton chops, but nothing on the bottom. Like swish, swish, and then swoop, swoop.

And what does he do? Everyday he looks in the mirror and thinks: "I'm gonna shave my upper lip, the bottom of my chin and this little patch here. But the rest is fine. I'll just keep it trimmed."

That is weird! That is a weird look and it's super finicky to maintain, and there's no way that it just grows that way, so he has to be doing that on purpose. He's going for that look.

"I am Ra's al Ghul. Why have you sought me out?"

"Uh… well… I need to get home to my Aunt Em and my Uncle Mort…"

Those creepy glowing eyes flickered for a second, then looked down at Quinn's feet.

"Where did you get those shoes?"

All of a sudden, it all made sense to Quinn. The over-the-top decorating, the pernickety and eccentric personal styling, the spoiled daughter, the weird amount of rumours about him and his lifestyle. _Ra's al Ghul was gay!_ Of course! She didn't know why she hadn't figured it out sooner!

"Cute, huh? I think they're Gucci. I got 'em off a dead woman. Well, that is to say the Joker took 'em off a dead woman and gave them to me for a present, and they're actually not that bad to walk in. I probably wore the bottom of the heel all to hell, but what can you do?"

Ra's raised an eyebrow and looked annoyed and intrigued at the same time. It's one of his three signature facial expressions, along with burgeoning hysteria and conceit.

"The Joker?" He asked.

"Uh-huh. He gave me a card for protection, too."

"I see. And you wish me to help you return home? Tell me why I should do this. Why I should waste time, resources and energy."

"Because… I'm cute? And I'm in trouble? And you're the Great and Powerful Ra's and nobody else can help me."

Ra's scoffed and paced back and forth in front of her with his hands behind his back, like in those movies where the officer is inspecting the enlisted men.

"Pathetic," He said, weirdly calmly and not necessarily in a mean way, "You have no right to expect my aid unless you do something for me in return. I do not believe in favours for the sake of favours. Assisting you would be an interruption in my plans, why should I bother unless you agree to aid me in payment? Help me and I will help you."

"Yeah, okay. That sounds pretty reasonable. What do you want?"

"Bring me the World's Greatest Detective and I will send you back to your Aunt and Uncle."

"Um…" Quinn didn't really know what she was about to get into, "Sure. I guess so. Where's he at?"

"Go west and you will find him. Now leave, and do not return or ask to be brought into my presence again until you have the Detective."

Quinn went back into the foyer, scratching her head over how she was going to kidnap this guy. When she saw What's-her-name, she said:

"Hey, is your dad gay?"

What's-her-name looked real shocked, cuz whatever she was expecting Quinn to say when she left the Lazarus Chamber, it probably wasn't that.

"Did you just ask me if my father is a homosexual?"

"Yeah. I mean, I think he is, but I wanted to double-check."

"No. No he isn't."

"Oh. You should… you should maybe tell him that he kinda reads gay. Like really, really gay."

What's-her-name was still kind of stunned, so Quinn headed over to Freeze and Scarecrow.

"Did you see him?" asked Scarecrow.

"Will he help you?" asked Mr. Freeze.

"Yeah, I saw him. He's weird. So head's up. Anyway, he says that he'll help me if I bring him the World's Biggest Detective. Wait! No! I think it was the World's _Greatest_ Detective. Maybe. Either way I gotta go to the west."

Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze exchanged the kind of look that two people might give another if their friend walked out of the doctor's office and said "Stage Four is pretty early, right? Cancer has like ten stages, doesn't it?"

"Scarecrow!" Called What's-her-name, having somewhat pulled herself back together after the unexpected question, "You may now enter the chamber and speak with the Head of the Demon."

Well, Scarecrow went in and he was pretty impressed by the room, and a little impressed with Ra's al Ghul, too. I guess cuz Quinn had told him to expect somebody more on the nutso side, he was pleasantly surprised to find it was less 'howling lunatic' nuts and more 'fashion monthly' nuts.

"I am Ra's al Ghul. Why have you sought me out?"

"I wish to know what the Nightwing's deepest fear is."

"That is a curious question."

"I am the master of fear in a cornfield that has fallen under the Nightwing's protection."

"Ah. I see. But tell me, Scarecrow, why should I reveal this secret? I do not give away sensitive information for free. But, I will make an agreement with you. Bring me the World's Greatest Detective, and I will tell you what you wish to know."

Scarecrow cleared his throat.

"Isn't this the same task you set to Quinn?"

"Yes," Ra's nodded, "I do not care which of you brings him to me. I do not care if you choose to work together or work against one another. But until the Detective is here in this city, I will not grant either of your requests."

Poor Scarecrow wasn't totally satisfied with this, but what the hell could he do? So he left the Chamber and told Mr. Freeze what had happened, and when Mr. Freeze went in, he was ready.

Okay, so same thing:

"I am Ra's al Ghul, yadda yadda yadda."

"I am Victor Freeze, and I need a sample of your Lazarus compound in order to cure my wife. She is terminally ill, and I have tried everything else in my power to save her. In exchange, I will help Quinn and the Scarecrow capture the World's Greatest Detective and bring him to you."

"This is a wise proposition, Freeze."

"You are a cold man, Ra's al Ghul. Colder even than I."

Ra's got all stone-faced, and he looked like he was going to launch into a speech about how the world had _made _him cold and all that junk, but Freeze left before it started. And a good thing, too! Those speeches go on for days, I swear.

Anyway, Mr. Freeze found his friends sitting in a grand banquet hall and having lunch with What's-her-name, who had just finished telling them how wonderful the world was going to be once it had been destroyed. Phoenixes had been mentioned so many times in the last half hour, Quinn was starting to worry that this broad didn't know that they weren't real.

"We will journey to the west and retrieve this Detective." Freeze announced.

See, he knew that if he tried to work against Scarecrow and Quinn, there was a one-in-three chance that _he _might not be the one to bring this chump to Ra's. And no matter how highly he thought of himself, if a little teamwork could guarantee that he got his reward because he was a member of the group - Goodbye, ego! Hello cure for Nora!

It makes sense.

"It will not be a simple task," What's-her-name said, "My beloved is wise and quick. He is strong and fast. He is courageous and bold. And he refuses to accept his destiny. He will not be brought here voluntarily."

"Ohhhh!" Quinn said, "The Detective is _your_ beloved! Okay, that kinda works. Yeah."

What's-her-name looked a little upset and a little curious when she asked:

"What exactly did my father say to you?"

"Well…" Quinn was starting to tell her, but Freeze got all Freezey on them.

"There is no time for idle conversation. We must plan our approach. The sooner this task is done, the sooner we can claim our rewards and leave."

"Yes," agreed Scarecrow, "And I suppose I know the most about the west, so I'll tell you what's said about the people there."

They spent the whole afternoon making a pretty loose plan, cuz they didn't want to get locked into anything specific if they got there and it turned out that all the had to do was throw a net over the guy. It was decided that they'd spend one more night in the Green City, get rested and eat some more while they had the chance, and then leave in the morning.

Quinn decided that she oughtta stop wearing her hair in braids, since they were hard to keep nice and even harder to keep twigs and stuff out of. So she decided that for the foreseeable future, she would go with pigtails. A lot of people think they're just girlie, but they actually make a lot of practical sense. That's why they were invented in the first place.

Mr. Freeze recharged all of his gear and convinced the kitchen staff to make up a travel basket of rationed meals for the trip.

Practical Mr. Freeze.

Scarecrow double-checked all the injectors on his syringes or whatever he needed to do, and then he went out and checked on Grundy. Grundy was fine, obviously, it takes a pretty extreme environment for him to be uncomfortable. But checking on him was just a ruse.

Wha….?

How can you not know what a ruse is? What do they teach in school?

It means a trick. A sort of sleight of hand kind of distraction. Like, Scraecrow goes out to the gate to see Grundy. And the guard says: "Scarecrow! What are you doing out here?"

And Scarecrow says: "Nothing but innocently checking on my dear friend Grundy, who we have been worried about greatly. The last time he was here, I understand it, you didn't treat him as an honoured guest."

So the guard nods, cuz that seems like a good enough answer.

But then, when the guard can't hear, Scarecrow says something really important to Grundy. Something that gives everybody a little insurance if things don't go their way.

Clever Scarecrow.

Then What's-her-name acted all nice and took Haha for a bath, and had the servants brush his fur and tie a green ribbon around his neck, with a demon head charm on it.

"For luck." Somebody explained.

"How kind!" Quinn said. But as soon as the door was closed and she and Haha were all alone, she pulled the charm off and stuck it in the dresser drawer. Cuz there is NO WAY that thing wasn't a tracking device.

Like, they'd get the Detective cornered, and then Ra's would step out of the shadows and thank them for their efforts, but since they had failed to bring the Detective to the Green City, he wasn't obligated to pay his debts. So they could leave empty-handed or they could die. Boom! A hundred swords pointed at them!

And that is exactly what he is like all the time. Never trust this man. Never. He's the freaking King of the Jerks, I swear.

Anyway, Quinn tied the old red ribbon around Haha's neck, since green wasn't one of their colours anyway, and promised him that Solomon Grundy would fix him a cute bow when they were on the road. Then everybody got together out side of the gate, and walked quietly towards the west. They were careful not to talk too much until they were nice and far away from all the guards and eavesdroppers of the Green City.

"Okay," said Quinn, "Where's the road that leads to the west?"

"There isn't one," Scarecrow explained, "Nobody from the west wants to come here. The best way to get where we're going is to head towards the setting sun. Once we've crossed the border, we will have to do our best to find the Detective's palace."

"It is not a palace," Freezey said, "It is an intricate network of caves full of bats."

Scarecrow stopped walking, and he went all rigid.

"That's not true." He said.

"Yes, it is. I know little of the Detective, but I know that for a certainty." Mr. Freeze kept going, and he was pretty far ahead of them before Scarecrow decided to get moving again.

"Took ill on Thursday?" Grundy asked Scarecrow.

"No Grundy," Quinn said, "He ain't sick. It's just that Scarecrow is scared of bats, so he don't wanna go in the Detective's cave."

"Quinn!" Scarecrow cried, "When someone tells you _a secret_, it is implied that the information will not be repeated!"

"Oh, come on. It's Solomon Grundy. He knows, like, four sentences that aren't part of his little nursery rhyme. Who's he gonna tell?" Quinn argued back.

Then, of course, Grundy kinda wrecked things by saying:

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats."

"Well! Whaddaya know? He learned a new thing! Isn't that great!"

Scarecrow just stood there with his arms folded over his chest.

"Uh… heh… Sorry, Scarecrow."

And they walked until they caught up with Mr. Freeze, and wouldn't you know? Sometimes, instead of saying he was born on a Monday, Grundy would look into the distance and say:

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats."

Which made things much more uncomfortable between Scarecrow and Quinn, and it was pretty much a given that she shouldn't take any food from Scarecrow or walk very close to him until the whole thing blew over. Unless she wanted to see a few scorpions.

Soon enough, all the walking made them pretty tired. The nearby buildings were kinda like the ones Quinn had seen back when she first met the Joker, but with more fire escapes and fewer gargoyles. There were a few lights on in some of the windows, but all the curtains were closed shut and nobody was around.

"We should find someplace to sleep." Quinn said, and just as she did they heard this funny buzzing noise.

It was like the sound of a wind-up car when you run it on the kitchen floor, and it was getting louder and louder and louder. Then, on the street in front of them, a little mechanical penguin turned the corner. A cute one, with little yellow flippers and a chubby tummy and glowing red eyes and a bomb strapped to it's back.

"Oh crap!" Said Quinn.

"Oh shit!" Said Scarecrow.

"Birdie-bye…" Said Grundy.

But Mr. Freeze always keeps a cool head, and he pushed everybody into a nearby alley just seconds before the penguin exploded.

KA-BOOOOM! Everything shook and the bricks of the buildings rattled, and there was a woosh of fire down the street where they'd just been standing, and one of the fire escapes came loose and almost crushed everybody, but Grundy stopped it.

For a while, there was nothing but dust. A big cloud of white dust so thick, Quinn couldn't even see the back of her hand. Haha was shaking like crazy in her arms and whimpering, but he was okay, he was just scared.

Then they heard an angry voice in the distance.

"What do you mean there are no bloody bodies?! Find them!"

She could make out the silhouette of a short fat man in a top hat, with a big fur-trimmed coat on. A bunch of goons were following him around. They couldn't see down the alley, cuz that fire escape that fell blocked their view.

"Who the hell is that guy?!" Quinn whispered.

"The Penguin." Mr. Freeze said, "He was the one who left me to die."

"Well, in that case I hate his stupid guts."

"Everybody hates him." Scarecrow explained.

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats… on a Monday…"

"Shut _up_, you biological fluke!"

"Scarecrow…" Grundy said in that nice, friendly way he did to let Scarecrow know that they were pals, "Scared 'a bats."

"That does it." Scarecrow hooked up his fingertip syringes and reached towards Grundy.

"Don't be a fool, Scarecrow. He will not be able to control himself and in this enclosed space, he will do more harm to us than to himself." Freeze said, watching through the dust at the further-and-further-away shadows of the Penguin and his goons.

Here's another tip: Mr. Freeze is like an elephant. He don't forget nothing, and when he wants to trample something, there isn't a hell of a lot you can do to stop him. Also, like elephants, he's prone to bouts of extreme melancholy. People don't know that about elephants, but it's true. I saw it on PBS.

So the next thing is that everybody hears the crackle of a megaphone, and then Penguin's voice:

"I know you're out there, Iceman! You think you can just walk into my territory?"

When Penguin's guys came by, everybody ducked down behind the rubble, which was so tall and twisty, it even managed to cover up Grundy. It was easy to see that the goons were armed, and also pretty apparent that they were not the highest calibre of goon. You know, if you go work for Penguin it means that you're the kind of guy who works for Penguin.

What, nothing?

Not even a chuckle?

Huh. That one usually get a few laughs.

Okay, whatever. You can't win 'em all. So the Penguin's voice came over the megaphone again and he said:

"I thought I left you dying in a field. Sorry to see you're alive, but it's not going to be for much longer."

And then KA-BOOM! The whole ground shook and there was a burst of red and yellow in the sky.

"What's he doing?!" Quinn whispered all worried.

"Blowing things up," Freeze explained, "That will be his singular strategy until we are dead."

"That's stupid and incredibly dangerous." Quinn said, not realizing that she'd just described Penguin's whole deal in a nutshell.

Well, it took just one more explosion before Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze and Quinn and Haha decided that they needed a plan. A good one.

"This is my fight," Mr. Freeze declared, "I wish to turn his blood to ice. I wish to watch him shatter into a thousand pieces."

"Yes, yes, we'd all like that - but I can't handle the goons," Scarecrow said, "And we can't influence Grundy enough to be sure that _he _can."

"Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday."

"What I propose is that we use Grundy and Quinn to create a distraction. He follows her instructions more often than anyone else's, so she can direct him as close to Penguin as possible. You take the high ground and freeze any of his men that pose a threat. Meanwhile, I'll get behind Penguin and inject him with enough toxin to drive him irreparably insane. Which is a fairly torturous fate, as these things go."

Freezey hesitated. He really wanted to bust Penguin into a million snowflakes, but trapping him inside his own fears? It wasn't what he originally had in mind, but…

"Very well. Do not fail, Scarecrow. Or I will freeze your hands and let them rot."

Sometimes we say terrible things to our friends just before they're about to help us. It's human nature.

So Quinn went running with Haha into the dust and the chaos of those two new explosions, and she called out:

"Come on, Grundy! Let's play a game! Don't let the bad men get little Haha!" And she made it sound like a great idea, and Grundy loved to play with Haha, so he came lumbering out of the alleyway, pushing all the debris aside like it was made of paper.

It was kind of dangerous for Quinn, cuz when Grundy got going it wasn't so easy to keep him aimed in the right direction, and if he got too worked up he'd forget what he was supposed to do. But with the limited visibility and how much that big schlemiel liked that hyena, it went pretty smooth.

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats!" Grundy called out, and ran after Quinn all like he was playing on a playground. Goons ran at him, and he swatted them clear away. It was kinda cute and kinda funny if you didn't think about it too much.

While all this was happening, Freeze had climbed up on the rubble of something that was probably a building a couple of minutes before. He was blasting anything that moved and wasn't Quinn or Grundy or Scarecrow. Goonsicles left and right. Ba-zap! Ba-zap! Ba-zap!

So, naturally, Penguin was screaming like a lunatic into that megaphone:

"What do I pay you sons of-" Uh, maybe I shouldn't tell you exactly the kind of stuff Penguin shouts. But it was real aggressive and full of swears, and made what Scarecrow shouted when he was trapped in the river look like the freaking Lord's Prayer by comparison.

The megaphone did him more harm than good. All that noise led Quinn and Grundy right to him.

"Well, son!" Penguin said when he saw Grundy shuffling in the rubble, "I bet you were the biggest in your class. But now you're just going to be dead."

I'm guessing he didn't really realize at that point that Grundy was an indestructible abomination, cuz he fired that stupid umbrella gun at him.

By the way, you wanna know who looks really suspicious? The guy with the beer bottle monocle carting around an umbrella on a sunny day. So what's the point of bothering with anything incognito? Just carry around the gun. Nobody's gonna treat you different.

Alright, so:

_Bang! Bang! Bang! _

Bullets all in Grundy, but he keeps going towards Penguin.

"Now that's what I like!" Penguin laughed, "A little bit of fight in the man! Take notes, lads - if any of you are still alive."

"Born on a Monday!"

"Oh-ho! You _are_ a different sort! Just perfect for my collection!" Penguin chuckled while he reloaded his dumb umbrella and got ready to take another shot at Grundy. _Cuz it was working so well at slowing him down_.

Ugh. Penguin, right?

But it didn't matter either way, because just then our old friend Scarecrow snuck up behind him, and on his hand was a glove where every finger was a syringe full of fear toxin, and he stabbed Penguin in the back of the neck with it! Hooray! And Scarecrow said:

"Your fears will be your tomb, Penguin."

Then he pushed the little mechanism in his palm and all the toxin went right into Penguin's blood, and his eyes went all big and his pupils went all small and he just started whispering: "No… no…" over and over again. But everybody else was fine, because whatever was so scary wasn't real at all, it was just in Penguin's head, so nobody else got frightened!

What's the matter?

Did you _like_ Penguin?

Nobody likes him, it's fine. I told it wrong if you liked him, he's a real pain in the ass.

Huh. You're a real sensitive kid, you know that?

Would it make you feel better if I told you that later a bunch of doctors came and got Penguin and pumped all the toxin out of him and gave him fresh blood from the nice people at Gotham General, and he got to eat cookies and they also gave him a dose of that stuff that gives you amnesia on purpose. I think it's actually a cocktail of benzodiazepines. Anyway, thanks to that Penguin couldn't remember any of his hallucinations, so his mind didn't completely break and he went back to being the same gigantic dickhead he always was.

But in the meantime, Quinn and Scarecrow and Freeze and Grundy and little Haha - who are _the heroes of this story_ - all managed to escape being killed by Penguin, who - you might remember - ripped out Mr. Freeze's life-supporting cryogenic thingamabob and threw it right where Mr. Freeze could see it but not reach it. Then, I might add, Penguin tried to blow them up for no freaking reason. So worry all you want, kid.

Scarecrow wasn't sorry.

Now, in a big fancy building on the top of a hill there was a man with a very powerful telescope. And he used this telescope to watch everything that was going on in the west, and when he saw something that looking like people doing bad things, he tried to stop them. He was called the Commissioner, and he had a big bushy moustache and was actually not such a bad guy, even if he made a lot of mistakes and sometimes did the wrong thing. Like now.

See, he saw the explosions from far away and went running to his telescope, but by the time he got to it all he saw was Freeze freezing people, and Grundy smashing people, and Scarecrow stabbing Penguin with a syringe-glove. So he thought to himself: "Troublemakers!"

His telescope was really, really powerful. But he had something even _more _powerful…

No, it wasn't the bat signal!

Where would you even get that?

It was a magic hat that let him summon flying monkeys. Which is a hell of a lot more interesting, thank you very much. And how it worked was that whoever owned it got exactly three wishes that the monkeys had to obey. He'd already used up two wishes. The first one was when he got the District Attorney elected, which was maybe not the best wish, but that's a story for another day. The second one was when he summoned the monkeys to take out the Falcone family, which they did but it didn't actually make much of an improvement in the west.

Huh?

Oh, the monkeys were all registered voters, see. And so the Commissioner summoned them on election day, and they all went down to the high school and voted for Harvey Dent. And he won by exactly twenty-two votes, which is how many monkeys there are. Easy.

So when he saw these new people that he thought were troublemakers, he went to his cupboard and got his magic hat and put it on. Then he stood on his left foot and said:

"Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke!"

He hoped onto his right foot and said:

"Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo!"

Then he put both feet on the ground and shouted:

"Ziz-zy! Zuz-zy! Zik!"

Which was the magic spell that made the monkeys show up. And when he finished doing the little dance and saying the magic words, storm clouds started to roll in and you could hear thunder in the distance. But also this crazy chattering, and that was the sound the monkeys made whenever they were summoned.

Sooner than you'd think, they were all sitting on the railing of the balcony where the great big telescope sat. They looked like regular winged monkeys, except they were all wearing little blue policeman hats with GCPD badges in the middle.

"This is your last wish, Commish," said the biggest of the monkeys, "You sure you wanna use it?"

"Yes. I'm sure. Fly down to the troublemakers over at the border and deal with them."

"Oh, sure! Take care of the troublemakers! Sure thing, Commish!"

Funny thing about the Commissioner, he thinks that being humane and ethical is normal. It would never occur to him that the flying monkeys were wild and fickle creatures, and when they heard a phrase like: "Take care of the troublemakers" they're not necessarily thinking that this is a command to escort people to the border and confiscate their passports.

Their crazy monkey brains are going straight to violence.

Well, you can't blame a monkey for being a monkey, and you can't blame the Commissioner for being optimistic, because it's a nice thing. It's dumber than a salt shaker, but it's nice.

Quick as a wink, the troop of monkeys was in the sky above our heroes. Chattering and shrieking in monkey-language, they started their terrible assault. And because everybody had only just finished fighting with the Penguin, the freeze gun wasn't charged and Scarecrow's syringes were all empty and Grundy was tired out. Those damn monkeys caught them with their pants down.

They weren't dumb monkeys, neither. They very first thing they did was about five of them went straight for Freeze and picked him up in his heavy, heavy suit and flew real high up into the air and then they dropped him. BANG-O! He hit the ground harder than an anvil, and crunched like tinfoil when he landed. His suit sounded like it was malfunctioning and powering-down, and all around him was a growing pool of blue freezing liquid. Like blood coming out of a gunshot wound. Horrible.

Next they went for Scarecrow and did a number on him, too. They tore at him with their monkey claws and ripped him up and left him in the top branches of the tallest tree for miles, hanging limp and bruised and scratched and bloody. And they took his hat and played catch with it before dropping it down in the mud. Meanest monkeys you ever saw, I swear.

It only took a few monkeys to do that, and while they were taking care of Scarecrow, the others had brought over big heavy ropes - the kind you see at the shipyards - and they were wrapping them around Grundy who was all worked up and trying to smash the monkeys with his fists.

"Born on a Monday! Christened on Tuesday! Married on Wednesday!"

But the monkeys were quick and didn't play fair, and they bound him up and it took almost all of them to grab the ropes and fly with him to a deep dark cavern and drop him into it. Now, it would turn out later that this was actually quite lucky, because the deep dark cavern was part of an intricate system of caves full of bats, and those caves had another entrance that was right underneath the big fancy house where the Commissioner lived. This was the same cave, you probably guessed, where the World's Greatest Detective lived.

But Quinn didn't know none of that at the time. All she knew was that her friends were pretty much being murdered left and right, and she just kind of braced herself for whatever the monkeys had in store for her. Cuz you can't run from flying monkeys. Not really.

"Grab the girl, too!" One of the monkeys called out, and another monkey swooped out of the sky to pick Quinn up. But it stopped and gasped before it did.

"Joker!" It said and started screeching all crazy.

The other monkeys flew down around it to see what the commotion was, and they noticed that their freaked out friend was staring at a playing card sticking out of the top of Quinn's apron.

"Joker!" Clamoured the monkeys like they were real upset, "Joker! Joker!"

Screeching in panic, they all flew back up into the sky and back towards wherever it was the monkeys came from. Watching from his telescope, the Commissioner was horrified. He hadn't wanted the monkeys to go on a violent rampage, but once he'd made his wish he couldn't take it back.

One good person can't stop twenty-two corrupt monkeys. Even if that person is giving the orders.

Poor Quinn was clutching Haha tight and looking around with tears in her eyes. Mr. Freeze had been dropped down beside a cliff, and even though Quinn could see him down at the bottom, there was no way for her to safely get to him. And Scarecrow was up so high in that tree, there was no way to climb to him. She didn't even _know _where they'd taken Grundy yet.

If she went on, she could only go on by herself. She'd have to face the Detective alone and get him back to the Green City without any help at all, and even if she managed without her friends she might not be clever enough to make sure that Ra's al Ghul didn't double-cross her and refuse to help her get home.

It was awful.

"Oh, Haha! We have to keep going, even if it's hard! Even if all we want to do is sit here and scream and cry until we can't make no more noise, we have to go on. There's nothing else we can do."

So that's just what she did. She got herself as psyched up as she could, given the kind of day she was having, and she walked. And walked. And walked. On and on in the direction the monkeys had taken Grundy, cuz the only place she could see real good was the big house on the hill where the Commissioner was. Of course, she didn't know that the Commissioner had summoned the monkeys, and she didn't know that it was exactly the right direction to go in if she wanted to get to the World's Greatest Detective.

But she found out soon.

Okay, so in order to get up the hill to the Commissioner's house, there was a big stone staircase that went all the way to the top. But right next to the bottom of that staircase was a big cavern, where the inside was all pitch black and the only thing you could see for sure from outside was a bunch of stalagmites and stuff. It was kind of creepy, and she was going to ignore it, but then from inside she heard a real familiar kind of roar. Like a hundred lawnmowers all firing up at once, and then a voice she recognized yelled out:

"Born on a Monday!"

Then a flash of blue and a quiet little _BZZT_, and no more sounds.

Well, a few bat-type sounds. Squeaks and flutters, that kinda stuff.

Gee, Quinn thought to herself, Solomon Grundy must be in there and he must be in trouble! I should go see if I can find him, but I'll have to be careful and quiet, because it sounds like somebody else is in there with him, and they got a taser or something!

So she tiptoed into the cavern ever so quietly and…

_THWACK!_

Right in the back of the neck with a little metal bat!

She was down for the count, cuz she'd stepped on a pressure plate that triggered a security system and a silent alarm. But how was she gonna know something like that? I ask you, who sets up a _cave_ with state-of-the-art security? It's weird. It's not right.

It just so happened that the World's Greatest Detective was-

No. No, he's not Batman.

Yeah, well. A lot of people are like that, so that doesn't mean this is Batman. He's a different guy with some things in common with Batman, okay?

Okay.

So the World's Greatest Detective (who is definitely not Batman) took Quinn up to the house on the hill, where she woke up on a little cot in a tiny room with one window and one door, and she had magic chains around her ankles. The Commissioner was waiting in a little metal chair, and he was sitting on it backwards for no reason like a cop. When Quinn woke up, he asked her all kinds of questions about the joker card and the Joker and if she knew about Dr. Young, and he wanted to know all that kind of stuff.

But she didn't tell him nothing, cuz she ain't no squealer. Snitches get stitches, kid. Never forget it. You keep quiet for Joker, and Joker keeps quiet for you. But if you go all around town blabbing secrets, that's a good way to wake up at the bottom of the ocean with a big happy smile on your face.

"Look," the Commissioner said, "You seem like a nice girl who's a little mixed up. Making the wrong kind of friends. I'd like to help you if you'd let me, but if you're not going to tell me the whole story, what can I do?"

This was a trick to get her to talk and she knew it and she wasn't going to fall for it.

"I want my lawyer." She said, and the Commissioner just looked exhausted and shook his head.

"You're going to be on the kitchen detail. Cleaning dishes, scrubbing floors, peeling potatoes and chopping onions. Do a good job, behave yourself, and we might let you go early. But if you cause too much trouble we'll have to review your case."

And it sounds easy to be good, but it's not easy. When you can't do whatever you want or chose how you spend your own time, it's hell. Sure you get breakfast every day, but every day at the same time and every day something you don't get to pick. Oatmeal and orange slices. Oatmeal and grapefruit slices. Scrambled egg whites and toast. Oatmeal and frozen blueberries. Not bad, but where's the fun stuff? You couldn't ever have cake for breakfast, even on your birthday.

Quinn did what she was told, but she also kept her eyes open. And on the evening of her first day, she found one of those old air ducts that lead into secret rooms and maintenance areas. The ones that are, like, weirdly big and great for breaking out. Only the magic chains meant that Quinn could go to the edge of the duct, but she couldn't climb out.

But it did lead to the caves, and from a grate she could see a big holding pen where Grundy was being kept, and he looked miserable and sad. Not too far from him was a fancy computer and a bunch of lab equipment, and sometimes Quinn even saw the World's Greatest Detective moving around in the shadows, but she quickly learned that he didn't spend a lot of time at home.

So at night, while everybody was sleeping, Quinn would climb into the air ducts and crawl through them down into the dark caves and talk to Grundy.

"Hey, Grundy. We're still captured. I just thought you might wanna know."

"Bats… on a Friday…"

"Yeah. Are there lotsa bats down there?"

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats."

"Yeah he is, Grundy. Yeah he is."

Sitting in the cold dark air duct, not knowing if she'd ever get out, it was real nice to feel like she still had a friend to talk to. Other than little Haha, who was such a traitor! Because he loved the kitchen scraps and the warm bed after all their travelling, and you can't really blame him because he was just a hyena and he didn't know no better, but come on! Try to show some freaking solidarity, Haha!

Life got kinda miserable for a little while. Quinn just did her stupid chores and visited Grundy, and every now and then she got a performance review from the lady the Commissioner had hired to run the kitchen rehabilitation program. She was this real uptight Latina who somehow thought that Quinn was setting back feminism by being a fun person. How, exactly, I don't know. Usually Quinn got a good report anyway, cuz she didn't start no fights and never tried to shank her supervisor.

One day, to Quinn's _huge_ surprise, the Commissioner himself came back to see her while she was scrubbing the floors with a sponge and a big bucket of soapy water.

"I've been talking to the Detective about you," he explained, "And I'm going to need you to give me your shoes."

"My shoes? What are you some kind of cross-dresser?"

She knew he wasn't, but she'd gotten real bitter about him and his stupid program and his stupid kitchen, so she wanted to say something mean, and that was the best she could come up with.

"Quinn, if you don't give me the shoes, I'll have to confiscate them."

"Just try it, lawman!"

And she picked up her bucket of water and smacked him in the face with it! The water all got spilled, but it didn't matter because the Commissioner was out cold. This was Quinn's first real chance to take some action.

First she took the keys to the magic chains and unlocked them. Then she tied up the Commissioner with some kitchen twine and gagged him with a pillow case. It didn't look like he was waking up any time soon, but she wasn't going to be stupid about this. She went to the other girls and handed around the keys. It didn't take long for them to take care of their supervisors and the rest of the Commissioner's staff.

"What are you going to do?" One of the other prisoners asked Quinn, when everything was taken care of.

"I'm going to dump the Commish in the bat caves and get my zombie friend. Then I'm gonna wait for the Detective to come back, capture his ass, and take him to Ra's al Ghul."

"Wow. That is ambitious."

But that was her plan, and that's what she was gonna do. Carrying the Commissioner down the cave was actually the hardest part, but she couldn't risk him being found by anybody coming by the house before the prisoners had a chance to escape. Besides, she was kinda thinking he might make good bait for the Detective. She hadn't worked that part out completely, but there was no rush because the Detective probably wouldn't be back for six or seven hours. She'd gotten pretty good at figuring out his schedule.

Except, maybe not.

Okay, so the Commissioner was still tied up and unconscious and she slumped him against the computer down in the cave. Then she opened the gate to the little paddock where Grundy was locked up. See, it was really easy to open it from the other side, but hard to work the latch if you were in it, and even harder if you were as dumb as Grundy.

"Scared 'a bats!" Grundy said all angry, and before Quinn knew what was going on, he'd grabbed one of the little metal bat-thingies right out of the air and threw it into the shadows.

The Detective had gotten back sooner than he was supposed to!

But at least Grundy was free. He started smashing everything, yelling out:

"Born on a Monday!" Because that's just what he shouts when he's all worked up, which is something you should know by now.

It was a hell of a fight between him and Batman- uh, by which I mean the World's Greatest Detective who is not Batman at all because this is a fictional story about fictional people with absolutely no basis in fact, especially not in the little details.

He's NOT Batman.

So Grundy and Batman were fighting, and Grundy was having a hard time because the World's Greatest Detective- wait. Yeah. Yeah I said that right. The World's Greatest Detective was real tough and real smart, and he was diving around and dodging blows and trying to trick Grundy into walking into this open electrical current thing so he could punch him in the back of the head. For a second, it looked like he'd beaten Grundy, and the Detective started to go over to check on the Commissioner. But it's pretty freaking hard to beat Grundy.

This is important: the World's Greatest Detective wears a cape and stupid hood with pointy little ears that _isn't_ a bat-shaped cowl, because he is not Batman. When Grundy got back up, acting crazier than a rabid bull, he grabbed the cape and pulled the whole thing off. Of course, the World's Greatest Detective wears like a little ski mask underneath it, so nobody saw his face, but as soon as he realized how tough Grundy was, he grabbed the Commissioner and used his little grapple-gun and P-CHEW! Shot right out of the room!

"Born… on a Monday…"

"Good job, Grundy! Now let's blow up all the extra entrances to this cave, and head upstairs to work out our new plan." Quinn nodded.

She was pretty sure catching the World's Greatest Detective was not something they could pull off now that it was just the two of them. But she took the cape and cowl from Grundy and a plan started to come together. It would take a little time, but it was just crazy enough to work.

See, she was starting to figure out that in order to get along in an insane place, you gotta do some insane things.

"Scarecrow?" Grundy asked.

And it was like when they'd gotten in trouble at the river all over again. It was weird, cuz Grundy didn't even seem to care that Mr. Freeze was also gone, but that was probably on account of that one time Mr. Freeze gave him frostbite. But, oh boy, did he miss Scarecrow. It was like he'd decided they were best pals even though Scarecrow called him an idiot all the time and treated him like crap and always wanted to poison him for fun.

Huh. Scarecrow is kind of a jerk.

Well, that never stopped nobody from making friends. I mean, Craney does have his good points. Off the top of my head I don't know what they are, but they stop people from stabbing him in the eye. So that's something.

"Scarecrow is drugging the angels now, Grundy. He knows what heaven fears most."

"Died on a Saturday?"

"Died on a Saturday."

Grundy was very sad to lose his friend, and not even Haha could cheer him up. No matter how much chicken he stole from the fridge.

Calm down!

Sheesh!

He's not dead. Neither is Mr. Freeze.

It was just a moment of dramatic tension, you know? Before you go into the third act of a movie, your heroes reach the lowest point and come closer to death than they've ever been before. Things gotta look hopeless, so that the audience feels like the happy ending is earned. Clayface told me one time when we were watching Casablanca in the rec room.

So quit it! Cuz if you're going to cry anyway, you might as well just go back to crying about being kidnapped instead of crying about this amazing story I'm making up. With no basis in real life or any Judy Garland movies. I don't _have_ to entertain you. I could go watch for Batman and shoot him with the boxing glove harpoon.

I'm just saying. I got places I could be.

Okay. I'll keep going, but only if you promise not to have _any_ emotions for the rest of the story. You gotta be like a stone. No reactions at all, got it? Good.

As it turned out, Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze had survived the vicious attack of the winged monkeys. But barely. Scarecrow had pulled himself out of the tree and gotten his hat back, even though it was smushed and busted up and looked like crap. And for a minute he didn't know what to do, but then he thought that wherever he went, he was going to need protection. So, figuring Mr. Freeze was dead and would no longer need it, he decided to climb down the craggy rocks and go get the freeze gun.

It was quite a surprise when - right when he was reaching for the gun - Mr. Freeze grabbed his ankle with a freezing robo-hand and said:

"I'll turn your blood to ice and leave us both to die before I let you take anything from me."

You remember all that blue stuff that came out of Mr. Freeze when he got dropped? It was cryo-fluid or something, and it runs all through his suit. His hand was covered in the stuff, and when he grabbed Scarecrow he burned his leg like when a doctor freezes a wart. Scarecrow's knee was never quite the same again.

"Freeze, I didn't realize you were alive," Scarecrow said, thinking real fast, "If you let me go, I can help you make repairs. Then you can protect me. Or not."

After a lot of arguing, and plenty of big words that pretty much amounted to the two of them hating each other and thinking that cryogenics and psychology respectively were not real jobs, they decided to work together again. Unfortunately, without Quinn and Grundy to bring cheerfulness to their team-up, they tried to double-cross one another about seventeen times before they got close enough to the Commissioner's house for Quinn to see their campfire from the window.

By then, Quinn had become a little bit of a fixture in the area. She was known for whacking the Commissioner in the head with a bucket and driving the World's Greatest Detective further into the west by attacking him with her zombie slave. Or so the local rumours went.

Most people were happy to be free from the Commissioner's reasonable but misguided leadership, since everybody was crazy and crazy people don't like having not-crazy leaders. All kinds of guests started coming to the house on the hill, bringing presents and advice and tributes for the Joker. A lot of those got eaten by Grundy, since the majority of them were fruit baskets.

"You know what?" Quinn said to Grundy and Haha one day, "I bet we could stay here and I could be, like, Khaleesi of the West. Except this place is sad for me because it reminds me of our dear friends that got murdered by monkeys, and also I think there's something I'm forgetting to do."

"Kansas." Grundy grumbled.

"Oh shit! That's right!" Quinn snapped her fingers, "We've got to get home to Kansas! Not you, Grundy. I mean, you can come if you want. You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so you might as well stay here. Except you're so fond of little Haha and he's coming home with me... Oh well, we'll cross that bridge once we're done tricking that self-righteous bastard in the Green City. Where'd we put the bat cowl?"

Grundy wasn't listening no more. He was looking at something glowing on the horizon.

"Grundy?" Quinn tried, waving a hand in front of his eyes. "Grundy! Bat! Cowl!"

He just stared, slack-jawed.

"Born on a Monday."

"Ugh. This is so stupid. Sometimes, I swear to god…"

Quinn went to her desk, which used to be the Commissioner's desk, and rang the bell for one of the new servants. He was a real meek little guy named Arnold who wore thick glasses and was nervous of EVERYTHING. He peeked around the door and said:

"Um, uh. Hem. Is there something I can help you with, eh-hum, Miss Blondell?"

"Arthur, what the hell is that glowing light in the distance?"

"Oh. The, uh, the-the light? That one there?" He pointed out the window at the exact same light Quinn was pointing at, "Is that what you mean?"

"Yeah. That's the one."

"We-well. Eh-hum," He took off his glasses and wiped them on the corner of his jacket, "People are saying that it's a campsite. Uh, oh dear. And it has two, um, two monsters. A snowman and a sca-a-a-a… A sca-a-a-a-re… Eh-hum. Excuse me, Miss Blondell. A scarecrow."

"Holy crap!" Quinn picked up Haha and twirled around like a princess, with a happy laugh. "Arthur, do you know what this means?!"

"That we're going to die horribly?"

"Not so good at reading reactions, huh?" Quinn sighed, "Go get the best nurses and robotics experts in this land and tell 'em to get their asses up here."

"But, uh, Miss Blondell, it's the middle of the deep night. That is, um, I think that they'll be sleeping and…"

Quinn pulled out the joker card and shoved it in Arnold's face.

"Yes! Of course, of course! Nurses and robotics experts, right away!" And he bowed and bowed and bowed while he walked backwards out of the room.

"You know something, Haha?" Quinn said, putting the little hyena back on the ground, "I got no idea what this card does, but it's the best present I ever got."

She tucked the joker card back into her apron, and looked at Grundy. This was going to take some finesse. For the last week and a half, she'd been trying to tell the dumb mook that Scarecrow wasn't ever coming back. And all of a sudden, she had to undo all that. As a sort of amateur psychologist, she wanted to make sure that Grundy didn't just think Scarecrow was a zombie like him. So, finesse.

"Scarecrow too ill on Thursday, got well on Friday."

"Grew worse on a Friday." Grundy nodded, "Died on a Saturday."

"No, Grundy. Got well on Friday."

"Reborn on a Monday?" He scratched his head.

"No. The monkeys scratched him up real bad, but he got better. He didn't die. Got well on a Friday, walked home on a Saturday, saw us on Sunday. Uh… Scarecrow is friends with Solomon Grundy?" Quinn shrugged. It was not the best poem in the world, she was the first to admit that, but it seemed to work. Grundy smiled and nodded his head some more, still watching the faraway light.

Then there was a tapping on the door, and Arnold came back in followed by a bunch of nurses and robotics experts. They maybe weren't the friendliest looking group, but all the easy-going types had left not long after the Detective abandoned his cave.

"Alright you guys, I need you to head out to that campfire and tell them right away that Quinn sent you. If they ask you to prove it, tell them I said that Haha and Grundy stink like a pair of butts. They'll know that's me for sure. If Scarecrow's hurt, you nurses patch him up; and if Mr. Freeze's suit is broken, you robotics experts help him fix it. I want 'em brought here, and I want 'em looking nice and feeling good. Got it?"

"Look, lady," One of the nurses said, "We're all real grateful that you took out the Commish and the Detective, but what makes you think we're going to walk god knows how many miles to pick up a couple of freaks for you?"

Quinn pulled the card back out, and wouldn't you know? Everybody's eyes went wide as saucers and the room felt real nervous. A lot of anxiety all at once. The energy really changed.

"The little J in the corner stands for Joker."

"Okay, okay." The uppity nurse said, "No problem here. Just, you know, trying to look out for local interest. But I see you're a girl who knows how to handle people. We'll go help your friends."

"Thanks a million. If there's ever a favour that's in my power to grant, let me know." This was what Quinn liked to say so that she seemed more benevolent than people's previous employers.

When the search party had left her chambers, Quinn got ready for bed and tucked the card under her pillow. She seriously loved that thing, but part of her was worried that she wasn't using it right. If only the Joker would come back and help her some more.

By the time the stars and the moon came back out, meaning it was sort of day-night, the campfire had gone out. Grundy was sitting in the corner weaving a sturdy picnic basket, and Quinn was asleep in her nice comfy bed with little Haha curled up beside her. She woke up to a surprise almost as good as Christmas morning when the doors opened up and a rough as hell looking set of familiar faces walked in.

Grundy looked up from the basket he was making and cried out:

"Scarecrow scared 'a bats!" He thumped across the floor and scooped up Scarecrow in a great big bear hug, and smushed the poor guy's skeleton and smothered his face in putrid zombie stink. His heart was in the right place, but that couldn't have been anything but gross.

"Arrrrgh!" Came Scarecrow's muffled voice, "Put me down, you crime against nature!"

"Hooray! Our beloved friends ain't dead!" Quinn said, "What a wonderful thing! Oh, Mr. Freeze! We've been so worried, and so much has happened! Come and sit down and have something to eat."

"The Detective, Quinn. Did you capture him?" Mr. Freeze demanded. He didn't look so good to be honest, a little like a can that got run over by a freight train. The robotics experts had done some good work, but there wasn't enough time for the big repairs.

"I captured… part of the Detective. And I got a plan for when we get back to the Lazarus Pit. By which I mean the Green City."

So she got a bunch of people together to fix up breakfast and to get Scarecrow some new rags and to help Mr. Freeze with his suit. And while everything was going on, she explained the plan to them when nobody else was around, cuz she didn't want none of it getting back to Ra's. Both of them seemed to like it, and when they heard about her adventures they were pretty impressed.

They were also impressed with Quinn's newfound political sway in that area of the West.

"We could rule this part of the world like tyrants!" Scarecrow noticed when another servant ran away from the Joker's card.

"What a wonderful place to stay," Mr. Freeze said all sarcastic-like, "Right between the Penguin's ungoverned goons and the Nightwing."

"Oh. Yes," Scarecrow stood up and went to the windows, "We are terribly close to the Nightwing, aren't we?"

He tapped his fingers on the glass and the whole room felt like a dangerous Halloween. In the back of her mind, Quinn could hear the snap of firecrackers and feel the warm glows of candles on her face, and everything smelled like fresh pumpkins and dry hay. She was spooked out a little, but she also wanted candy corn real bad.

"Scarecrow," she said, "Don't be dumb. You can't go fight him on _his_ home turf, you can barely fight him on _your_ home turf. He'll just beat your skull in with a glowstick."

"He won't know we're coming. We could gas him, or I could get him with the syringes. Freeze could help."

"I will not help with pointless endeavours. Why would I want to harm the Nightwing? He has done nothing to me, and he cannot do anything for Nora. I do not care about him. Or you." Freeze leaned back in his chair and looked all mean.

"The man has a point," Quinn shrugged, "I don't want to take time out of my quest to help with your crazy shit. We all agreed to get to the Green City, then we all agreed to try and capture the World's Greatest Detective, and now we all agreed to betray Ra's al Ghul. Nowhere in there do I see the part where we try and kill a giant bird. End of discussion."

"You'll all live to regret this." Scarecrow vowed.

"Blow it out your ass, Jonathan."

They stayed in the Commissioner's house for almost a month, repairing Mr. Freeze's suit and getting everybody back in shape. They let Scarecrow use the first aid equipment to mix up fresh batches of toxin, and Haha ate so much chicken he gained four pounds. And by the time they were ready to leave the Winkies, which was their slightly derogatory nickname for Arthur and his friends, everybody was surprisingly sad.

See, even though they liked her better than the Commissioner, the Winkies were still a little scared of Quinn on account of the Joker card. And they didn't get along with Scarecrow, cuz Scarecrow resents timid people. He was bullied as a child. It's complicated, and he doesn't face those issues. But they _loved_ Mr. Freeze. They were real suckers for a sob story, and they liked the way he dealt with problems - freezing them. In fact, they asked him if he would be interested in being their king. They told him they had research facilities he could use, and they'd make him a special ice palace. He said he had to investigate the Lazarus goo and then maybe he'd see about coming back.

"If this thing with Ra's doesn't pan out, you're going to have to take advantage of their laboratory." Quinn said.

"I know."

Well, in honour of their time together, there was a big ceremony where Arnold presented each of them with a gift and some nice words.

Quinn got a gold and diamond bracelet. She was really rocking some good accessories, what with her fantastic shoes and the cap she'd found on the desk. Nobody could remember who the cap belonged to, and it looked cute with her outfit, so she took it.

Solomon Grundy got a golden belt for keeping his pants up, and everybody was incredibly grateful. Except Grundy, who was a little confused by the whole ceremony and just kept asking if it was a christening.

Haha got a golden clown charm for his ribbon, and Quinn was happy for him. It wasn't a tracking device like the demon's head he got in the Emerald City, it was just a nice present. Real sentimental. And they put extra chicken in the new picnic basket Grundy made, since the little guy liked it so much.

Scarecrow got a new pointy hat, and a list of people's recent nightmares. The Winkies weren't sure what he'd like in the way of gold, so they didn't give him any. He was pretty pissed about that.

Mr. Freeze got all new tubes for his suit and gun in shiny polished gold. They'd done the ones in the suit with him supervising, but the gun was a surprise. So most of his stuff was still silver, but the inside was gold, making it so he kinda like the end of Star Wars.

And that's everybody.

"Um, we'll never forget you," Arnold said, wringing his hands, "That is, uh, unless you want us to forget you."

"I think it'd be nice to be remembered," Quinn smiled, "And Arnold? Try to do something about your self-confidence. There's meek and there's _meek_, you know?"

Then they all set out and there was all kinds of cheering and happy confetti throwing and people crying because they wished that Mr. Freeze would stay forever. By the time Quinn and her friends were back on the road, they already had that feeling you get when you're real tired after a party. You know, when you just want to take your shoes off and watch infomercials until you fall asleep. But they had to get back to the Green City.

Except, there was a little tiny ever-so-small problem.

See, there weren't any roads between the Commissioner's house and the Green City, and everybody was kind of mixed up in the direction department. Cuz which way was which? Did they have to go north east or south east? And how even were they supposed to know which way _was _east? In the regular world, where there's a daytime, you can figure it out by watching the sun rise. But in the Arkham world, see, the moon didn't rise. It stayed in the same place in the sky and went through all its phases and sometimes got real dark, and sometimes got real bright. So that was pretty unhelpful.

Finally, using some landmarks they thought they recognized, they started to head back towards what they thought was where they'd fought the penguin. Of course, Quinn was a little worried because she did not remember there being a field of flowers between the hill and the rubble.

They were tall blue flowers shaped like big bells, and they came up to her knees. They were different from the poppies, but she didn't want to take any chances. She covered her mouth with a red handkerchief and kept a close eye on Grundy. They camped there for two nights, and the only thing they could see for sure was that there were more flowers up ahead.

"We're completely lost." Scarecrow grumbled, "And now I'll never find out what would terrify the Nightwing, and I'm certain I have lost my chance to attack him without his knowing."

"Enough with you and your foolish obsession, Scarecrow." Mr. Freeze said, "I have been away from Nora too long."

"Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday." Grundy said all tired, and little Haha was already asleep in his arms.

"Ugh. I can't believe you two didn't say something before with left the house on the hill! We could've got a map or something!"

"You shouldn't be too surprised," a familiar voice said from behind them, "Men are terrible at asking for directions."

Quinn turned around to see Ivy, dressed in her gardening clothes, holding a pot with a creepy looking orchid in it. She didn't look very happy to see them, but she also didn't look especially annoyed.

"Ivy!" Quinn said, "Do you know the way to the Green City?"

"Of course I do. It's in the opposite direction you've been walking in."

"Aw, crap!"

"Why don't you just use your magical cap and command those awful monkeys to carry you there?" Ivy shook her head, like she was real tired of everybody being so stupid.

"This cap is magic?!" Quinn said, and pulled it off her head to have a good look at it, "Look at this! There's special words in here and everything!"

"Say them and the winged monkeys will come. They're your servants for three wishes as long as you have that cap." Ivy said.

"How do you know that?" Scarecrow asked.

"Because I pay attention to important things. Your problem is that you're too focused on your personal interests."

"Did Harvey tell you?"

"…I don't see how that's any business of yours."

"How do we know that we can rely on these monkeys?" Freeze asked, "The last time we encountered them, they did not seem like allies."

"Well," Ivy rolled one of her shoulders, "That's just a chance your going to have to take. Because if you're not out of my garden in three hours, my babies will rip you limb from limb."

That's when they noticed that they were surrounded by a ring of giant Venus flytraps that were not there before, and somehow seemed to be moving closer.

"Gee, Ivy. I thought we were friends."

"Oh, you and I _are_ friends. But the scarecrow, the snowman and the zombie are nothing to me. Other than mulch."

"I want you to know that I understand, but I'm real disappointed." Quinn shook her head, then started to follow the instructions written in the cap. She stood on one leg and then the other, just like the Commissioner did, and she said the magic words. "Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke! Hil-lo-, hol-lo, hel-lo! Ziz-zy, Zuz-zy, zik!"

"What _are_ you doing?" Ivy asked.

"That's how you summon the monkeys. It says on the label."

There was a big dark cloud that moved through the sky, and those chattering cackling whoops that all the monkeys made. Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze couldn't hide their nerves, they had their weapons of choice ready to go as soon as the monkeys landed. I mean, the last time they saw these little bastards they were halfways killed. Makes a guy jumpy.

"If we cannot trust these creatures, I will annihilate them." Freeze said, "And then I will turn my gun on any foliage I wish to. Including you, Ivy."

"I would love to see you try, snowman." Ivy smiled daggers, "But I was telling the truth. These stupid, horrible creatures will have no choice but to follow Quinn's command."

By then, the flying monkeys were pretty close and the racket they made was louder than the parking lot of a stadium after the game. The first thing that everybody noticed was that they weren't wearing any police badges no more. Instead, some of them had on jester hats, some of them had on clown makeup, some of them had big red noses, all stuff like that.

"Of course!" Scarecrow snapped his fingers, "We needn't worry about these monkeys now, Freeze. The only thing we should concern ourselves with is that this cap never falls into the wrong hands. When your three wishes are up, Quinn, you must turn it over to me."

"Yeah. Uh-huh. I will certainly be sure to do that, my old pal Scarecrow. That is definitely a thing that will be happening. Giving you absolute control over a gang of killer flying monkeys. There is nothing I can see wrong with that."

Before Scarecrow had a chance to make some kind of snippy little remark back at her, the monkeys were flapping their wings and hovering over the flowers in front of them. It looked a little uncomfortable for them to not land, but chances were good that they'd learned all about the flowers in Arkham the hard way.

"So," said the monkey in charge, "You're the new boss, huh? Cuter than the last one, ain't she fellas?"

All the other monkeys made a bunch of jeering noises, so Quinn flipped them the bird.

"Your mothers drink warm beer, you dirty monkeys," she said. "Now, what's all this crap about three wishes?"

A few of them laughed and whooped and did loops in the sky.

"It's not hard to understand, lady." The lead monkey said, "Whoever owns the cap can give us three commands - only three - and we have to obey them. If they try for a fourth command, we kill 'em. But we gotta follow your three commands, see? And we don't make no tricks about it. We legitimately do our best to serve."

"Except for all this disrespectful wisecracking."

"Hey, what can you do? Fish gotta swim, cannibals gotta eat, winged monkeys gotta crack wise. It's the way of the world, toots."

"While it's always fascinating to learn about new cultures-" Scarecrow cleared his throat.

"We must move on, Quinn." Mr. Freeze demanded.

"Okay, okay. Monkeys! Take us to a spot reasonably close to the Green City, but far out enough that Ra's al Ghul can't see us coming right away!"

"You want the back gate or the front gate?" The top monkey asked.

"Which is easier to sneak up to?"

"Front."

"Front it is!"

"She coming too?" One of the monkeys from the back asked, nodding at Ivy.

"Nah. Just me and Mr. Freeze and the Scarecrow, and Solomon Grundy and little Haha."

The monkeys nodded in unison, and then with a lot of speed and precision, worked together to make hand chairs for everybody. Two monkeys could carry Scarecrow, the top monkey and a couple of helpers could carry Quinn, the biggest monkey took Haha all by himself, ten monkeys took Mr. Freeze and all the rest of the flock took Solomon Grundy. And those ones flew real close to the ground and had to take a lot of brakes. Quinn waved goodbye to Ivy from up in the sky, and she noticed that there were a lot more killer plants in the field than she'd thought. It was good that they got out.

"So…" Quinn said, trying to make conversation while the flew over the lands of the west, "You been a flying monkey your whole life?"

"Yeah. I guess so."

"No enchantments or nothing?"

"Oh sure! Enchantment is the whole deal! Sure, I've been a flying monkey since the day I was born but I'm as enchanted as a pair of Christmas balls. All the monkeys are. You wanna hear about it?"

"Ain't nothing better to talk about."

"Alright, it all started in King Arthur times with a demon named Etrigan…"

And the monkey went on and on and on in way too much detail and most of it was bullshit anyway. Cuz who believes that demons have to talk in rhyme? That's stupid. And it had freaking Merlin in it! If you're gonna make something up, don't go overboard. People don't mind being lied to, it's being lied to like they're idiots that's a problem.

Okay, so the part of the story that made sense was that once the Demon had cursed the monkeys, he gave the cap to a guy called Jason Blood who got to make as many wishes as he wanted. On account of the original agreement being that the monkeys would be eternal slaves of the cap's owner. But, apparently, Jason Blood didn't want to deal with long-term monkey governance falling into the wrong hands. So his first command was that the monkeys go and live somewhere far away, so that the people of Arkham wouldn't have to look at them all the time and so they could get into mischief well away from the guy's house. And his second command was that they only follow three commands of any subsequent owners. In case somebody like, oh let's say Scarecrow got his hands on the cap.

And his third command was that the monkeys take the cap and give it to a Man of Peace.

"So we did that," the top monkey told Quinn, "And when his three commands were up, he gave the cap to somebody else he thought was worthy and it went on like that for awhile. Sometimes we got good commanders, sometimes we got lousy commanders, and that's about all."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. Thanks for telling me all that, monkey. I want you to know that I think the beginning of that story was total bullshit."

"What?! Screw you, lady! You go walking around with a freakin' zombie and a half-frozen cyborg! You're gonna go see a thousand year old man who takes a scented bath every afternoon so that he looks fifty-five! You just used a freakin' magic hat to summon wingedmonkeys! And you can't find it inside yourself to believe _this_?"

"You shouldn'ta put Merlin in it," Quinn shook her head, "Everybody knows Merlin is pretend."

For the rest of the trip they had one of those arguments that isn't really an argument. They just shouted things at one another at the same time, at full volume. Poor people's parents do that all the time, not like your parents. Your parents probably drink a lot of gin and passive aggressively take things out on your housekeepers. The shouting is much healthier.

"Quinn!" Scarecrow shouted from behind them, "Quinn! Look there!"

For a second, Quinn thought the he was talking about the Green City, which they could now see on the horizon, but he was actually pointing to a small abandoned bunch of shacks just on the inside of the big forest. This was a good thing for him to point out, because it potentially offered a solution to their biggest problem. I'm not gonna tell you too much, because I kinda want you to be surprised.

"Monkey! Put us down there, please!"

"You got it, lady."

So the monkeys put everybody safely on the ground, and everyone was happy except for the one monkey who had to carry Haha. Haha didn't like to fly, and he'd been trying to bite him the whole way. Quinn thanked their new friends and waved goodbye to them as they flew away.

"I like them." She said with a nod.

"You like Solomon Grundy." Mr. Freeze reminded her, then he charged up the freeze gun, "I will prepare to fire on any opposition."

It didn't look like there was going to be any opposition, though. Quinn scooped Haha up and took a look around for herself. There were three little buildings made out of barn-style panels of faded wood with doors made out of rusty corrugated metal. She couldn't hear anybody moving around inside, and she got that tingly feeling you get when you walk into an abandoned place. Carefully, she slid back one of the pieces of metal. Inside the walls were covered in little poems written in neon green spray paint, and there was a big question mark on the wall opposite of them.

"Oh." Said Scarecrow from over her shoulder, "I know who's running _this_ sideshow. He's an absolute douchebag."

"Heh, heh, heh," Quinn chuckled, "You said douchebag."

"Not from lack of vocabulary, my dear," Scarecrow shrugged, "I simply feel that douchebag is the most precise way to describe the man in question, so to speak. He's harmless, though."

He walked into the shack and took a look around. There was a tripwire that wasn't finished at the doorway. Scarecrow tugged on the part that seemed to trigger a recording device that sat on a table in the middle of the room. The tapes started turning and a voice said:

"I'm surprised you made it this far, Detective. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. If you solve my next puzzle, you might be able to save her in time… Hmm. Note to self: This riddle should be clock-based. Switch puzzle with question forty-five, redo earlier challenge. Obtain large pendulum."

"Douchebag." Scarecrow muttered under his breath, "Well, I suppose you and Freeze should check the other two buildings for supplies. I'll finish up in here. You should always leave a note when you've borrowed something."

So Quinn and Freeze did just that very thing. They came across some plank boards, some nails and a hammer, some green paint and some purple paint, a bunch of caster wheels, good rope and more sound equipment. It turned out that the current occupant of the temporarily abandoned shacks was well-stocked in building supplies. Who could ever say why he needed all that crap, but it was good news to our heroes that the douchebag had it!

While they went to work constructing, Scarecrow did his own chore.

He made a cluster of three gas canisters, tied them with some twine from his pocket, and hooked them up to the recording and the tripwire. Then he made sure that the tripwire activated not when you stepped through it, but when you opened the door. Lastly he made a recording over top of the one that they'd heard before. Scarecrow's went like this:

"Poor Edward. There's only one question that matters. _What are you afraid of?_"

Then he shut the place up tight and made sure that nobody touched that door.

What? No.

I'm not telling you what Mr. Freeze built, because it's a surprise for later.

Wait five seconds and you'll find out.

Oh! OH! You wanna argue? You wanna maybe throw a tantrum or something? Cuz let me remind you of something, kid…

Yeah, damn straight you'll be good.

Okay. So, it was the bright night when Quinn and her friends came up to the door. Scarecrow, having noodle arms and being a complainer, was carrying Haha and the picnic basket. Meanwhile, Mr. Freeze and Quinn were pulling a great big present on wheels with the ropes they'd found. It was a purple box about as tall as the gate would allow, with a green ribbon painted on it. And from inside were coming a few groaning noises and the sounds of cracking ice.

The ninja guards gave one another a few sideways glances.

"You're back." One of them finally had the nuts to say.

"Really? No freakin' way!" Quinn scoffed, "Did you hear that, Freezey? We're back!"

"I cannot believe we made it." Freeze deadpanned.

"Yeah, we're back. And we brought the Detective," Quinn said to the guards, "So go get Skankerella and tell her that it's time for Papa to pay some debts."

It was a burst of activity as some of the ninjas whispered to each other and some them stepped up to the box for a better look. The ones in charge went to go get What's-her-name. One of them tried to look inside Scarecrow's basket, but he clicked together the syringes on his fingers and aimed them at her neck. She backed off after that.

"What is going on?" What's-her-name demanded, walking up to the front gate. She took in the whole sight and looked real confused.

"We captured the Detective, like we were asked, and now we want to come inside and get our rewards. Or is that going to be a problem?" Quinn asked.

The chick with the pants looked at her real skeptical.

"Let me look inside the box." She said.

"Well, we could do that, but he'd probably escape. Right now, his legs are frozen and he should still be half out of his mind on fear toxins, but you never know. He's tricky. We got evidence, though."

Scarecrow pulled the cape and cowl out of the basket, and all of the ninjas gasped.

"How… how did you get past the Commissioner?" What's-her-name asked.

"I hit him in the head with a bucket."

"It was fairly heavy," Scarecrow added, "It was full when she hit him."

What's-her-name couldn't believe it. She just stood there, looking at the cowl and looking at the box and shaking her head. Which was kind of offensive, to be totally honest. This was an extremely dangerous group. It's not like freaking Baby Doll and Clock King were showing up here.

"I suppose you had better come with me." She finally decided, and led them all into the Lazarus Chamber, where Ra's al Ghul was waiting.

He was standing with his hands behind his back and one eyebrow raised. The room was full of ninjas, all standing in a circle around Quinn and her friends. This is a warning sign. When dangerous people surround you, even if they try to make it look like a ceremonial thing or whatever, it's because they're going to close in. That's the long and short of it every time.

"I'm impressed." Ra's al Ghul said, as Scarecrow chucked the cowl at his feet.

"Now pay us." Mr. Freeze demanded.

"Ah, yes." The Great and Powerful Ra's nodded, "You are nothing more than mercenaries, here for your gold. While I scramble to build a better world for us all, you are content to squabble amongst yourselves. Wallowing in the slums of a decaying social order…"

"He's not going to pay us." Quinn said.

Ra's al Ghul smiled a jaguar's smile and all of the ninjas had simmy swords out and pointed at everybody.

"No," said Ra's, "I'm not going to pay you."

"I see," Quinn nodded, "We were worried about that, weren't we Mr. Freeze?"

"Indeed. But I'm afraid that there's nothing we can do."

Ra's al Ghul walked right up to the box and started examining it as a couple of ninjas went up and took the freeze gun and the syringe glove off of Quinn's friends.

"That's true. There is nothing Mr. Freeze and I can do, but there _is_ something Scarecrow can do."

More swords were put on Scarecrow, and Ra's al Ghul whirled around to look at him, with his back to the big present.

Scarecrow just shrugged and said, as loud as he could:

"It's Monday."

For a second, Ra's al Ghul didn't know what was happening, but realization dawned on him pretty fast. His glowing yellow eyes got all wide and he was just about to turn back around, but by that time, Grundy's hand had smashed through the front of the box. Grundy grabbed Ra's throat and held him up high as the rest of him came busting out of the box. The only thing inside had been him and the tape recording of reasonably Batman-like sounds that Mr. Freeze had made.

"REVENGE ON A MONDAY!" Solomon Grundy cried, crushing Ra's neck and throwing him against the wall like a crumpled up paper bag. He whipped around and started cracking his fists against the ninjas, chicks flying left and right.

What's-her-name ran over to her father, who was temporarily deceased - but that's never a permanent condition with that asshole. She called the remainder of the guard to help her get the body away, while Grundy kept going nuts and smashing up the whole Lazarus Chamber. Green goo was spraying everywhere, walls were crumbling, the whole shebang.

"We must flee!" What's-her-name shouted over the sounds of destruction, "He will kill us all!"

"REVENGE! REVENGE!"

Chaos everywhere while the guards that were still alive tried to escape with Her Royal Highness and the corpse of the Great and Powerful Ra's.

"Now, Freeze!" Quinn cried out, and Mr. Freeze punched the guard with the ice gun and shot it right at what's her name! BZZZT! Froze the bottom half of her, so she was half out of an ice cube. The ninjas watched in horror. On the one hand, they had to serve What's-her-name at all costs, on the other hand if Solomon Grundy killed everybody, nobody could revive Ra's.

"Go!" What's-her-name cried, "Preserve my father! It is my will!"

So the ninjas took off with the corpse and that was that.

"It's Tuesday." Scarecrow said very calmly.

Solomon Grundy stopped then.

"Christened on Tuesday…"

Huh?

What do you mean a hot air balloon?

Why would Ra's al Ghul have a hot air balloon? What are you talking about?

Whatever. So everybody got settled into the Green City and took What's-her-name as an official prisoner and everything. They unfroze her, but they left her in one of the dungeon cells that they found while they spent the first day getting adjusted. The Green City was nicer than the House on the Hill had been, but there were no Winkies to help them settle in. The only people who lived in the city had been members of the Lazarus Society or whatever, and they had all fled when Grundy was destroying things.

Anyway, everybody got comfortable and raided the kitchens and helped Grundy calm back down, which wasn't so hard on account of all the green lamps everywhere. Then, once they were more rested, Quinn went down to see What's-her-name.

"You basically ran the store around here, right?" She asked.

"Are you going to kill me?" What's-her-name sighed in a prosaic kind of way. I guess when you grow up around immortals and magic goo, you get a little more blasé about that stuff.

"No. We want you to pay us."

"What would I pay you for? You didn't bring us the Detective."

"That's a good point, but your father had no intention of giving us an honest wage for an honest job. So what we figure is that you can give us a dishonest wage for a kind of ransom, see? We are more than willing to let bygones be bygones and let you go off to whatever secret safe house your little playmates took your Papa to, as long as you do us some favours."

"What do you want?"

"Same things as last time. A way back home, a cure for Nora, and a list of the Nightwing's fears."

"I cannot give you these things. Not really. I have no knowledge of whether my father could, but I suspect that he could not. As far as I know, there is no way to return to another realm once you have been marked by time in Arkham. We have had limited dealings with the Nightwing, and I know him to be fearless in many ways. I cannot give you an answer to that question. As for Mr. Freeze's request, I will give him a sample of Lazarus, but it would take constant exposure to great quantities to heal his wife - and as you have seen, it is not a dependency to take lightly. Lazarus _changes_ those it heals."

"So… we did all of this for nothing."

"…Yes."

"I'm not going to lie, princess, I ain't happy. Maybe we _will_ kill you."

"There is a solution to one of your problems. Seek out the Joker once more. He's the only creature I know of who can walk between both worlds. He may also be able to tell you something more about the Nightwing, though I can't make any guarantees. I suspect Mr. Freeze will be leaving you. But as I said before, I can offer him all I know of Lazarus - but I cannot promise that he'll like what he learns."

Quinn folded her arms and tried real hard not to look as ragingly pissed off as she was. You gotta keep a cool head in some situations, some people are like vultures waiting for you to screw up so they can pick your bones. What's-her-name is like that.

"I'm going to ignore the fact that you just called my good friend the Joker a _creature_. Now, you know that I'm not from around here. I don't know the lay of the land, and every time I've talked to Mr. J, it's been him who comes to find me. That works good most of the time, but it looks like it's going to be a problem now. So, tell me where to find him, and we'll let you go."

What's-her-name smiled, and you know something? She looked like her old man when she smiled.

"It's seems that you are more at my mercy than I am at yours."

"Oh, okay. I'll just go back upstairs and get the fear toxins or the ice gun or the freaking ten-foot-tall zombie with a personal vendetta against you. Then we can have a nice little conversation about who oughtta screw over who."

"Your methods are crude. You will learn quickly that a person's enemies matter more than their friends," What's-her-name said, "The way to the Joker's lair is directly south. Do not veer east or west. It's my understanding that he keeps himself in the Arkham family mansion, which lies just inside the gate. It is the gate that will stop you from returning home. Will you release me?"

"Yep. But first I gotta go upstairs and get the ice gun. I'm not letting you out of there without cover."

Quinn went upstairs and found Scarecrow measuring the windows for new curtains. Mr. Freeze was looking through great big books about the Lazarus goo, and Haha was sleeping in a basket. The inside of the Green City was nice, and there was a lot of potential for expansion, but Quinn still wanted to go home.

"Okay, so it looks like my only option for getting back to Kansas or wherever the hell I'm from is to go south and find the Joker," Quinn announced, "Scarecrow, shitty news for you - none of the League of Assassins ever knew anything about the Nightwing, they were just jerking you around. Freezey, kind of shitty news for you too - turns out Lazarus is a Pet Sematary type deal. Nora might come back, but she'll come back wrong. So I guess that we just walked into the worst case scenario. Again."

"I'm not concerned with the opinions of this cult," Mr. Freeze said, "They view this chemical as part of a larger ritual. I do not. My wish is to study the properties of Lazaurs, and from this I will draw my own conclusions."

"I guess that's your own business, and I respect it."

"I shall not go with you to the south, and it should not be difficult for you to understand why. I have need of a laboratory, therefore I shall retrieve Nora and transport her to the House on the Hill and become the king of the Winkies. I thank you sincerely for your aid, and before parting I would like to tell you that I do not think you can trust the Scarecrow."

"You son of a bitch." Scarecrow said from across the room.

"That is all." Mr. Freeze nodded.

"Okay, well, thanks," Quinn smiled, "Oh! But before you leave us, which is making me very sad, can you walk What's-her-name out to a dangerous place at gunpoint and leave her there with her hands tied? I made a deal with her to let her go."

"Very well, Quinn. Perhaps we shall meet again one day, under happier circumstances."

So that evening, they said their farewells to Mr. Freeze as he walked into the darkening shadows of the deep night, with What's-her-name marching ahead of him. And it really did make Quinn sad to see him go, and she wondered what sorts of adventures he would have without her and whether or not Mrs. Freeze would ever be okay.

What's your problem, kid?

I just told you, she doesn't know if the Lazarus is going to work. They parted ways.

Because that's how the story goes! This whole time, Mr. Freeze has been telling everybody left and right that he's only hanging out with them until he can get back to Nora with some of the green goo! Now he's leaving, and you're _mad at me_? Mr. Freeze does not make friends. Mr. Freeze just has people who aren't his enemies all the time. His whole life is Nora. Deal with it.

And you know what else? Just cuz you're being such a pain in the ass about this stuff, Solomon Grundy decided to stay in the Green City. They tried to take him along, but he wanted to stay with the pretty lights.

"Grundy… king…" He mumbled, and sat in the big throne that Ra's al Ghul had sometimes used.

"Well, as long as he's happy." Quinn decided.

"I cannot believe this." Scarecrow grumbled, "Freeze is king of the Winkies, Grundy is king of the Green City, and what am I?"

"The Master of Fear," Quinn said, "And don't you bitch about it, neither. Because a king is only a king as long as people let him be one, but you can always make people afraid."

"Huh. That was quite a nice thing to say, Quinn."

"Yeah, well. I guess it's cuz you don't have to go south with me, and I think it's real nice that you are."

Scarecrow shook his head.

"It's only because it's too long and dangerous a journey back to the cornfield for me to try and go alone. Besides, the Joker may know something about the Nightwing."

"You could've stayed with Grundy. He likes you."

"Yes, and I couldn't be more overjoyed about _that_," he rolled his eyes, "But I don't think I would have liked it there. Unpopulated places don't have much appeal. Who's there to terrify if everyone is too terrified to visit? First the legend of Ra's would keep them away, then the realty of Grundy would. And I would have no subjects."

"See! You are a king, Scarecrow! You just have to pick your own subjects!"

They walked and walked and walked, with their supplies and taking turns carrying the hyena, and it was almost like the backwards version of the beginning. Her and Haha and Scarecrow, walking towards the Joker instead of away from him. In fact, even the countryside felt kind of the same. That is, until they came to the big white wall that looked like it belonged to an enormous china cup.

"What even is this?!" Quinn cried, looking up. The wall was almost thirty feet tall, and on the top of it was a border of painted roses.

"I suppose we should find a way around, or maybe climb up the-" But before Scarecrow could finish, Harley was already trying to kick through the wall.

She took off the red high heels, put them to one side and just started kicking and kicking. With every slam of her foot, little fractured cracks got wider and wider. Quinn didn't know what exactly they were going to find inside, but What's-her-name had said not the veer to the east or the west, just to go straight, and that meant busting through the wall.

"Let it all out." Scarecrow said, because he didn't know what else to say. Quinn had forgotten to tell him about the no-veering rule, so he just thought she was having a violent outburst brought on by her frustrations with the constant challenges they had to face.

Quinn grunted and swore and kicked and kicked until there was a big enough hole for her to start tearing out pieces of the china with her bare hands. When she was done, and she had been sure to put her shoes back on, she was covered in so much white powder she looked like one of Black Mask's girlfriends in the bathroom of a night…club… But which I meant to say something far more age appropriate.

Moving on! On the other side of the china wall was a world like nothing Quinn or Scarecrow had ever seen before. Inside, everything was made of china or possibly porcelain. But that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was that it was all a miniature recreation of Wonderland, which seemed very strange to Quinn. She couldn't quite figure out why there was a representation of fantastical world inside of an actual fantastical world. But then, she thought, this is a very crazy place and the Scarecrow once told me that people are alike wherever you go. So there's probably someone here who wishes they were in Wonderland, because there's always somebody unhappy in every corner of every world.

There was a china palace for the china queen of hearts, and a china croquet game being played with china flamingos, and a china caterpillar smoking a china hookah. And none of this came up any higher than Quinn's knee, except the full-sized tea table that was in the middle of everything.

"Why do I get the impression that we just stepped in a big steaming pile of crazy?" Quinn mumbled.

"Because it looks like we did." Scarecrow chuckled weakly.

"Alright, here's what we'll do. We will walk as silently as possible through this weirdness. We will break nothing. We will say nothing. We will cross our fingers that this is as creepy as things get from here out."

"That is a very good plan indeed!"

And it almost went perfectly. But once they'd gotten further into the diorama, they found a girl in a blue dress with a black ribbon in her hair. She was staring off into the distance, like she was trying to see something real far away. She didn't turn her head to look at Scarecrow and Quinn, so they motioned to one another to go around her. Of course, Haha couldn't read sign language, so he made his yelpy hyena sounds and struggled to get out of Quinn's arms. She held him tight enough, though.

The strange girl turned to look at them, and said:

"You'll have to stay for tea."

"Run. Run fast. Run now." Scarecrow said under his breath, and Quinn thought it was a sensible idea. So they ran.

They didn't care where they were going or what their feet smashed into. They broke a March Hare and shattered the White Knight, they kicked over the great chess game and booted Tweedle Dee about six feet away from Tweedle Dum. Scarecrow nearly broke his foot on the walrus and ran on one leg for twenty yards, but they got clear of the place.

In fact, they were suddenly in another forest, hidden among the trees when they heard a scream of total anguish from behind them.

"No, no, NO! Who has ruined my Wonderland?!"

But they didn't feel like going back to apologize.

The forest they were in was not as nice as the one where'd they'd found Solomon Grundy, and that's saying something. Because, as you will recall, that forest had been marshy and disgusting. This one looked like a ghost forest after a nuclear incident. It was decided between the two of them that it seemed likely they'd run into something as dangerous as Killer Croc again, and also they didn't want to walk up to their ankles in some seriously questionable bog water. So the flying monkeys were summoned once more.

The dark cloud of them filled the sky and almost covered up the whole moon before the top monkey was in front of them, flapping his wings to stay off the disgusting ground.

"Gee, you sure do wind up in interesting places," the monkey said, then noticed that the group had shrunk, "Where's the big guy and the bigger guy?"

"They both got made kings." Quinn explained.

"Huh," he nodded, "Y'know, I can kinda see somebody making the guy with the helmet a king, but not so much the guy with the solid gold belt and the tattered pants."

"Hey! I just thought of something!" Quinn snapped her fingers, "Can you monkeys fly me to Kansas?"

"Uh…" The top monkey scratched his head, "Just a second."

He flew up to the rest of the group and started talking to them in monkey speak. Back down on the ground, Scarecrow wasn't giving off an aura of annoyance.

"What?" Quinn said all stern, "You don't know what I'm thinkin' - if they say yes, I'll have one half of the monkeys take me home and I'll use my last command to have the other half of the monkeys take you back to the cornfield. It doesn't solve your Nightwing problem, but it solves your walking across Arkham problem."

This didn't seem to placate him much. He was probably just pissed off that _he_ hadn't thought about asking the monkeys to take them home.

"Okay!" The top monkey flew back down to them, "We are sorry to inform you, O Keeper of the Magic Cap, that none of us monkeys know where or what Kansas is. The good news is that you still got two commands. See, some meaner monkeys would have just told you that you wasted a wish just by asking, but we're bound to do our best by that stupid piece of crap demon."

"I don't wanna start a fight, monkey, but I still don't believe in no demon. I mean, you told me he looked like a puffer fish! You're not even good at making up stupid stuff!"

So, naturally, the top monkey and Quinn started another shout-fight, and the only thing that stopped them was Scarecrow threatening to stab both of them with syringes.

"I guess that's all, toots," the monkey said, "Sorry about that last command."

"Wait! That ain't all! You take us and the hyena over this forest and right up to where the Joker is in the south. Arkham Manor or something."

"Yeah. I was worried you might ask us something like that." The monkey sighed, "Okay, we'll do it. But would it be so awful if we dropped you off a little further away than his front door? It'd be an easy walk, I swear."

"I guess, but what's the problem?"

The monkey said he'd tell her about it on the way, and then the group picked up Quinn and Scarecrow, and the same big monkey got to carry Haha again, but he wasn't exactly happy. Haha tried to bite him right away and didn't let up the whole trip. Meanwhile, the boss monkey got to telling Quinn about the trouble they'd had with the Joker.

"Well, see, this was all a long time ago. Before the Commissioner got the cap, before the guy before the Commissioner got the cap. This was back when Penguin had the cap. In those days there were a lot more monkeys…"

The story was kinda violent, and involved a lot of shit. Like, actual shit. Penguin wasn't real creative about the things he could command ferocious winged monkeys to do, which was a blessing in its own way. Anyway, the short version is that Penguin used the monkeys to start a gang war with the Joker, and in retaliation, Joker always killed flying monkeys whenever he saw them. His goons were under orders to do the same.

"I will certainly tell the Joker to leave you alone," Quinn decided, "You guys have been a big help. You saved us from a solid week of walking. Twice!"

"Yeah. One thing to remember about the Joker, kid - he thinks it's funny to break promises."

The monkeys set them down on the edge of what looked like a haunted carnival. There were faded striped tents, a rusted carousel, a popcorn machine that was popping corn, and other such stuff. In the background of all this was a haunted house. Classic Pinkney architecture, restored and everything. Behind them, the monkeys flew away like they were leaving the gates of hell, but they were quiet. It was the first time they'd ever stopped their monkey chatter, and even though Quinn knew the reason, she didn't like it.

"Well," she said cheerfully. "Here we are!"

"I've changed my mind," Scarecrow nodded, "I think I _will_ walk all the way back to the eastern cornfield. It's been a pleasure. Good luck getting home."

"Oh, okay. I'm sorry you got scared."

Scarecrow went all rigid and turned towards her.

"I'm not scared."

"Yeah, you are. You're a giant wuss who's freaked out by imposing architecture. And that's okay. Go home. Thanks for your help, you've been a dear friend."

"Don't try to play mind games with me, I know that you know that I'm afraid of only one thing."

"And I know that you know that deep down, that's not true. Here, I'll even call the monkeys for you. Now, let's see, is it _ep-pe, pep-pe, kik-ke_… no, I think it's _kak-ke_. I'm gonna hafta read it again." And she was taking the cap off and pretending to read the label, when Scarecrow started walking right up to the entrance of the house.

It was at the end of a long midway and decorated with one of those open-mouthed clown heads. Just as he was getting to it, a couple of goons strolled over to him. And these were not small people. They were the kind of guys little Bane wanted to be when he grew up. One of them coulda snapped Scarecrow like a twig, with one arm tied behind his back. They were both dressed up like thrift-store clowns.

"Want something, professor?" One of the goons chuckled.

"The lady would like to see your boss." Scarecrow said. Quinn was still holding the cap and watching from a little ways back, because if this got ugly she really would have to call the monkeys.

"I don't think you know what you're asking, poindexter. The Joker don't see nobody who ain't on the list."

Scarecrow stabbed the talking guy right in the neck with a needle and plunged. In seconds he was on the ground screaming about the kangaroos nobody else could see. His friend was stunned.

"Where's the list?" Scarecrow asked.

"There ain't one today!" The other goon explained with his hands up, "Sometimes we don't get no list! Oh, god! What did you _do_ to him?!"

"The same thing I'm going to do to you, if you don't let us inside."

"You're nuts! Everybody around here is nuts! I ain't ever coming back! I'm gonna go work for Two Face!" The goon called as he ran into the distance. Lots of guys go join up with Two Face. You get dental. Nobody's sure how he does that. Probably some legal thing. Pulchra Dentium or some shit like that.

Anyway, Quinn was pretty happy.

"Good job, Scarecrow! I knew you weren't really afraid!"

But he wasn't listening, he'd pulled out his notebook and was writing down what the guy afraid of kangaroos was screaming about. Apparently, you don't often meet guys with macropodaphobia. It was almost half an hour before she could get Craney to move his ass inside.

"We going or what?"

"Just a few minutes, it should wear off soon and then he'll sleep."

"Is this what I look like when you dose my food?"

"Yes."

"Don't ever do that to me again."

Finally, they made their way up to the front porch of the mansion. It was like going to the Bates house. Even Quinn, who was secretly very excited to see the Joker again, was asking some questions about the kind of place they'd walked into. Haha was shaking like crazy in her arms, and if Scarecrow hadn't been taking notes and walking at the same time, he probably would have been experiencing a four on his anxiety scale and a two on his terror scale. Just enough to be uncomfortable.

Each of the stairs had a whoopee cushion under it, so the porch farted as they stepped up. There was a normal, innocent looking doorbell with a little sign taped above it that said _Ring Me_. So naturally, not being born yesterday, Quinn knocked real loud.

There was some scrambling noises inside like furniture being moved around, and a familiar voice shouted:

"Somebody get that!"

But nobody did, so Quinn knocked again.

"Somebody answer the door! What am I paying you idiots for?!"

Quinn knocked a third time, and there was a lot of grumbling, and then the door was pulled open lightning fast and there was the Joker.

"WHAT?" He shouted, without realizing who it was. He was wearing his usual suit, except the jacket was off and he had on a frilly pink apron and two oven mitts. When he opened the door, Quinn and Scarecrow could smell fish cooking.

His face changed from angry to happy when he saw Quinn.

"Oh it's _you_! And you brought the shoes!" He laughed, "This is perfect. I was just thinking it was time to go and find you again, but you've saved me a trip! Say, did you ever get out to see Old Ra's?"

"Yeah. I accidentally got a zombie to crush his throat. Zombie's king of the Green City now." Quinn shrugged.

"Not _Solomon Grundy_? Oh, that is fantastic!" Joker's whole face lit up, like an angel's. "I knew I could count on you for some entertainment, kid. And you look nice. Is that a new bracelet? And a new cap?"

"Yeah. It's the cap to summon the flying monkeys, which I stole from the Commissioner after I ran him outta the Winkie Country. Which is what I call the west, because it's full of people like Arnold Wesker. I was there because I had to capture the World's Greatest Detective and take him back to Ra's and his skank daughter. Of course we didn't actually kidnap the Detective, we just stole his cape and his little ears. Then we hid Grundy in the box and painted it up like a present and took him inside to smash up the city…"

Joker nodded along while Quinn told him just about everything interesting.

"I think you should come inside," he said, and pointed at Scarecrow with an oven mitt, "Who's this?"

"Scarecrow. He destroyed the Penguin's mind with brain poison."

"Well! Any enemy of the Penguin is a friend of mine!" Which is true, except it's important to remember that Joker - like Scarecrow himself - is _kind of_ an asshole to his friends. Kind of. Sometimes. God bless him.

Once they were all sitting around a surprisingly gourmet fish dinner, Quinn was able to fill in all the gaps in her story. Joker was really amused, and she was happy because he was happy. Poor Scarecrow was having a third wheel moment, and he just quietly ate and sometimes helped Quinn remember details that she forgot.

"…which is why we came here. Also, I need you to promise not to kill anymore flying monkeys."

"I promise," Joker smiled, "As long as you give me the magic cap once you're done commanding them to take this bag of straw home."

"Okay. And it's very nice of you to let me send the Scarecrow home. Which reminds me, do you know what the Nightwing is afraid of?"

"No!" Joker laughed and laughed, "Isn't that hilarious, Scarecrow? You went all over the world and _nobody knows the answer_!"

Scarecrow was pretty pissed about that.

"Well," Quinn sighed, "I am very sorry for my friend the Scarecrow, but I'm wondering if you could maybe help me get back to Kansas? I know you said I'd have to ask Ra's, but What's-her-name said to ask you, and I like you a lot - I really do - but I'm starting to think you were kinda jerking me around before."

"Can you blame me?" He asked, "I wanted to show you how wonderful our world was so that you'd want to stay. And look at all the friends you've made, and all the hilarious things you've accomplished! You killed Ra's al Ghul! I didn't even think they'd let you inside!"

"I love it here, but I got a life where I came from. I want to get my doctorate."

"In what?"

"Psychology."

The Joker laughed so hard he fell off of his chair, and had to hold onto the table cloth so he could stand back up. Most of the plates fell onto the floor, but it was okay because everybody was done eating.

"I really like you. Alright. Let's get those monkeys to take care of your friend and I'll show you how to get back to Kan-"

HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?!

You were supposed to go around the front! Didn't you see the green arrows?! Mr. J is gonna be so mad at you, you're ruining his big surprise!

She's _fine_. I was just telling her a story. And it's not finished yet, so could you give me five minutes?

You're a real son of a bitch sometimes.

Okay so the shoes turned out to be magic and inside of them under the soles were out patient passes that the Joker and Quinn used to escape and they parted ways but Quinn promised never to forget him, she went back to live with Aunt Em and Uncle Mort and started taking her courses even though her Aunt thought it was a waste of time and didn't believe she'd ever been to Arkham even though she had because it was true, and eventually she got another hyena and named it Heehee on account of Haha being so lonely for Solomon Grundy, meanwhile, Scarecrow got home safe but he never did find out what the Nightwing bird was afraid of. And Quinn promised that one day she would go back to Arkham. The End. Oh! And she gave the cap to control the flying monkeys to Joker just like she promised and he didn't kill no more monkeys like he promised.

What?

WHAT?! Don't you give me that look!

It was the freakin' Wizard of Oz, but I forgot some parts so I drew from my own experiences. I don't know. Do I look like I know what to do with a bored kid for three hours? Besides. She liked it. Didn't you, sweetie?

See!

This is Batman, by the way.

He's being a dick today.


	2. What the Nightwing Fears

Look left, look right,

Look into the starry night,

Try to find, try to hear

What it is the Nightwing fears.

Turn over rocks, check behind trees,

Is it rats or heights or killer bees?

Is it a chiller? A thriller? An existential dread?

Like commitment, or paralysis, or being trapped in your own head?

Perhaps it's quite simple, perhaps it's complex,

The kind of a thing we'd never expect.

Maybe darkness, or picnics, or a musical tone,

Or maybe - just maybe - it's being all alone.

Look left, look right,

Look into the starry night,

Can you find, can you hear

What it is the Nightwing fears?


End file.
